Joseph Muscat has said that his party supports the government in its nomination of Tonio Borg as EU Commissioner. He also said that Labour MEPs will be working in Brussels to support that nomination. Quite frankly, what Joseph Cuschieri can possibly do in that regard is beyond me. Any help from him might actually be construed as hindrance, but there you go. We all end up paying for the odd choices of others.
Yet Muscat’s messages of support come mixed with a curiously conflicting smugness about what he says will be the opposition in Brussels to Borg’s appointment. “We support the nomination,” he told one television interviewer, “but people in Brussels are already working to discover information (the word he used was ‘jelevaw informazzjoni’) about him.” He then added hurriedly that of course Labour has nothing to do with it because this information is in the public domain already.
I can’t help thinking that this is yet another mis-en-scene: look good by making a great show of backing the nomination, while gloating because the nominee will be given a tough grilling from which you very much hope he will not emerge intact.
Typical Joseph Muscat, I’m afraid. And the dead-giveaway that he’s read the same script on Devious Plans which his friend JPO has done is his inability to control his facial expressions. Try as he might to hide the smugness and self-satisfaction – that transparent expression which children, bitchy women and some silly men wear when they think their Big Secret has got one over on you – he just can’t do it.
One of the biggest differences between the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition is in facial expression. With the former, it’s what you see is what you get. With the latter, you always get the feeling he’s hiding something or planning something or is stroking some secret lovingly. I don’t wonder, though, that people trust him or think him amazing. Just look at how many people think that poor John Dalli is innocent.
It must be absolute torture being Franco Debono, forever upset about something and feeling so very hard-done-by while laundering his emotions in public.
This is one of his latest confessions, errors intact:
“Austin Gatt is still inh cabinet becuase out of loyalty to the party and because I am a gentleman and in the Arriva vote I just ABSTAINED.
“I have been extremely loyal to Dr Lawrence Gonzi. Even after the great trouble for the PN erupted and Dr Gonzi went for a leadership contest I didn’t manage to get myself to vote against him, and I didn’t. I wished that the party would get rid of Austin gatt and change course, so i gave Dr Gonzi another chance.”
So, now he is a gentleman in his own eyes. And he is loyal, too. My, he even gave the Prime Minister “another chance”. I hope the Prime Minister knows how lucky he is to have such a merciful and caring backbencher.
Franco Debono had better watch out, because another member of the Evil Click is gearing up to write a blog. John Dalli has registered www.johndalli.com and has promised to entertain us with his observations, presumably on the subject of Me, Myself and I.
Franco’s commenting fans will desert him as they have deserted other similar forums which offer them scope of kvetching against gOnzIpN. I have observed the fascinating fashion in which they move en masse from one forum to another, instead of flitting between them all, presumably because the sort of mind that thinks Labour is fantastic can deal with only one thing at a time. That other member of the Evil Click, the dentist who botoxes members of the Labour Party in his spare time, has had his multiple Facebook pages deserted by those who were his avid fans only a couple of months ago.
Now, no matter how provocative he is, he can’t seem to stir up a storm of responses, and even his “top o’ the mornings” are reciprocated only by a mad policewoman, an anonymous slander-blogger, and a Laburist who can’t spell.
What are the odds that Jeffrey, feeling outdone and outstripped by fellow Evil Clickers Franco and Johnny, will now register www.jeffreypullicinoorlandosmith.com and write scintillating posts about his Earl Grey tea and why the Nationalist Party no longer deserves great men like him and the man sacked by Brussels, in between one injection and another?
Perhaps Silvio Zammit could offer them all a job in his circus and feed them mqaret if the good boys carry on jumping through Muscat’s hoops of fire without getting too burnt.
www.daphnecaruanagalizia.com