While it smacked of an obvious princely anointment, the political decision on the part of the Prime Minister to appoint Nationalist MEP Simon Busuttil as his special delegate no doubt left a sour taste in various other contenders’ mouths, who would have been more than happy to be his ladies-in-waiting and do a “Frank Portelli”, i.e. shepherding disgruntled faithful to suddenly fruitful meetings months, if not weeks, before we go to the hustings.

To his credit or condemnation, Franco Debono, the dissident government MP who seems lost trying to find a way out of the labyrinth he created for himself, has publicly confessed he would have jumped at it. It would have given him the opportunity to reingratiate himself with the party hierarchy, revive somewhat his electoral hopes and come out a smiling, as opposed to smirking, hero. Sadly for him, the choice fell on Simon Busuttil who is generally credited with having taken a huge chunk of the finely divided Maltese electorate for a ride when leading the pro-EU membership crusade a few years ago.

Cartoonists have since whimsically portrayed him as “Super Simon”, but in real terms and in the eyes of a growing number of people he is today more of a “Simple Simon” who says one thing but does another. His credibility with so many different sectors of Maltese society has long taken a nosedive. That he is now being entrusted with salvaging party votes is of course based on the belief that he can go on hoodwinking people – and in so doing reflect exactly the same political trait that the GonziPN caravan has shown since its unconvincing razor-thin victory of 2008.

As head of the MIC, Busuttil had been the reassuring voice required to intervene with the many NGOs and organisations that had at the time shown even a hint of doubt as to what future lay in store for them after eventual membership of the EU. Of course, many of them even got it in writing that they had nothing to worry about and, in any case, they were guaranteed that their government would always be there for them – strong, powerful and inevitably persuasive with the Brussels top brass.

We all know that the result is a government that simply kowtows to all EU demands regardless of what they could mean to its citizens. Hunters and trappers have seen all the promises, once airbrushed and polished by Simon Busuttil, gone with the wind of bureaucratic reality. Young men and women have also understandably reacted with horror to the ACTA business that was first described as harmless by Busuttil but is now being swiftly pushed under the carpet of electoral convenience.

Fishermen and farmers, all of whom had also received nicely written pieces of paper putting their minds at rest, have not fared any better and today see their future as both threatened and certainly unattractive. Their representative bodies know full well that it is no longer a question of membership or not – that was a decision taken a long time ago by the electorate and needs to be respected – but more a case of their having been led a merry dance.

Now that very same Pied Piper of Hamelin has been granted the privilege of acting as the Prime Minister’s “special delegate” to carry out a purely political party role, with the sympathising media immediately offering a helping hand. On the PBS programme TVAM, for example, Busuttil was interviewed about his ACTA ideas, only for the discussion to slowly but predictably switch to his new political role. Not to be outdone, the PBS news people then had him interviewed about his planned initiatives, as if the job he has undertaken is some nation-saving operation and not a desperate political ploy aimed solely at applying the brakes to the ruling party’s machine before it hits the edge.

It must be emphasised that Simon Busuttil’s appointment is not a government chore, but a party service and the Broadcasting Authority would do well to take note of this distinction. One would rightly expect the party stations to amplify or otherwise the Pied Piper’s role, but not the national broadcasting system that is constitutionally bound to be impartial and balanced in its treatment of anything that is of public interest or a source of political controversy.

People on both sides of the political fence have rightly questioned the wisdom of the Prime Minister’s choice for special delegate. It is an open secret that Busuttil is well placed in the Richard Cachia Caruana camp. The connection goes back to MIC and pre-EU referendum times and remains evidently strong to this day.

As Franco Debono not too diplomatically hinted in Parliament, and openly and publicly later, RCC is widely considered part of the oligarchy that internal and external critics have condemned and insist should be removed before the party in government can make any headway out of political cuckoo land. Now if the Pied Piper is supposed to play the tune destined to entice the disgruntled, the angry and the disappointed back into the fold, he first needs to convince them the oligarchy’s days are truly over. The question is: how can he convince anyone that it has really happened when he is generally perceived as part and parcel of that same oligarchy?

The Pied Piper’s tune this time is a jarred encore. Of course there will always be the rats – but hopefully no sensible children in the metaphor of the famous legend – who are mesmerised by its music. Mepa, for example, has already prepared a highly trained choir to harmonise its welcome. Other choruses will follow at the Inland Revenue department, the VAT department, the job centres, the civil service, and what’s left of the state-owned organisations and other vote-generating assembly units within the government armoury.

Simon Busuttil will play his flute like never before, backed by a massed band of fellow cohorts, all with one intention in mind: applying those screeching brakes to avoid the plunge into the abyss. The Pied Piper and Speedy Gonzales pressed-ganged into one rallying final concert.