Prime Minister Joseph Muscat knew what he was doing when he appointed a parliamentary secretary for Justice under the responsibility of the Interior Minister.

It was one of his early decisions intended to hurt the Nationalist Party, which had suffered so much for the same move made by Lawrence Gonzi when he had appointed Carmelo Mifsud Bonnici as Minister responsible for both Justice and Home Affairs in the previous legislature.

The PN’s one-seat majority, as we all know, did not leave too much room in which Dr Gonzi could manoeuvre, and ultimately he was forced to separate the two portfolios – a decision that did not prevent the political embarrassment of seeing Dr Mifsud Bonnici later resign for reasons that had nothing to do with his competence.

So, when the Labour Party won the election, one way by which Dr Muscat turned the screws on his opponents was to re-unite justice with home affairs. It was a way for Dr Muscat to tell the PN that he could get away with it, unlike what had happened to Dr Gonzi. With nine extra seats in Parliament, the advantage is comfortable enough.

This is why there is more to it than the official reason that Dr Muscat has given for once again separating justice from home affairs because they do not go together. It’s not that he woke up on his 100th day as Prime Minister and decided to rectify that mistake – because Dr Muscat does not think it was a mistake to have justice and home affairs together.

He only said so because it was politically convenient for him to say so when he was still Opposition Leader, and he only says so now because it is convenient for him to say so as Prime Minister and he wants to play down his own embarrassment of having to carry out a mini reshuffle just three months plus since he took over Castille.

I do not know what pushed Dr Muscat to place justice under his wing 100 days into his stint as PM, and it is not my intention to speculate on the rumours that have been circulating. But it does not look good that he is having to make so many U-turns at the start of the legislature.

Apart from the justice-home affairs story, it happened when the waiver to allow parliamentary secretary Franco Mercieca to continue with his private practice as an ophthalmologist was reversed after public outcry and when transfers given at St Vincent de Paul Home for the Elderly were withdrawn.

By the way, it was quite shameful that a parliamentary sitting that was discussing these transfers had to be suspended on Monday because the two sides of the House were at each other’s throats. The Speaker was constrained to issue quite a stern warning about the kind of language that was being used. If MPs are already so hot-headed so early in the term I wonder how things are going to be later on.

To go back to the government’s decisions, it is easy to say that they are being made because the government listens to what people are saying. One of the main reasons the Nationalists lost so heavily was that they allowed themselves to grow distant from the electorate, and it was too late to get back on track when they realised their mistake.

It is good that the Labour Party is sticking to the promise it made to keep the two-way communications system with the people open at all times, and the success of the “Gvern li jisma’” dialogue meetings is the best example one could give. This exercise should continue to be held every six months.

But if one were to look at it from another angle, it shows a government that is indecisive and ready to back down at the first glimpse of trouble. Some may describe this as being a shift from the arrogance we saw in the previous administration, but others may think it is also a sign of populism.

Dr Muscat was, however, not popular with many of his own supporters in the last few days when he appointed Lou Bondi to a commission that is to oversee preparations for events linked with several anniversaries Malta will be celebrating next year.

Some prominent members of his party – past and present – cannot understand why he chose to appoint a person who was often attacked by the Labour Party for what the PL described as pro-PN bias on the national TV station. Dr Muscat has justified the move saying that he promised a Malta that belonged to everyone, and he can see no reason why someone like Lou Bondi could not contribute.

I will go a step further and say that what Dr Muscat did was quite clever. He gave Lou Bondi a choice in what, for Dr Muscat, was a win-win situation. The fact that Lou Bondi accepted is the perfect example Dr Muscat can boast about that even people who are not in agreement with the Labour Party are being allowed to work with it, if they want to. If Lou Bondi had not accepted, Dr Muscat could have used the refusal to score political points in his favour if he is accused of keeping pro-Nationalists out of the loop.

Dr Muscat was not so clever, however, when it came to appointing a Chinese company that is blacklisted by the World Bank to carry out a feasibility study on a permanent link between Malta and Gozo.

Some years back, when he was still Opposition Leader, he had said that a Labour government would not enter into any agreements with companies that have this black mark. But this is precisely what has been done in this case.