To be still awake at 5am after a night out means, in most cases, not being completely sober, or else being absolutely tired.
It is thus so easy to lose track and to get involved in a discussion that gets out of hand.
This is what it seems happened last Sunday morning at a popular pastizzi joint in Rabat.
We may think these are normal times. After all, we had an election and a change of government remarkable for its lack of episodes of violence except, if one remembers correctly, an incident outside yet another pastizzi joint, this time in Hamrun.
But these are not normal times at all. Currents run strong and deep and at 5am after a night out it is easy to imagine how tempers must have flared.
When the episode in question involves two persons who have been very much in the national focus for the past year or so and these find themselves in a hot spot (this does not mean it was they who created the incident) prudence should have perhaps dictated quite a different course of action.
These are no normal times. The extreme heat makes idiots of us all, let alone drink, and we are near to some very politically sensitive festas, especially next Sunday’s at Hamrun. In times like these, in circumstances like these, with a PL back in power after 25 years, and a PN struggling to come to terms with losing power, there are all the ingredients for a single episode to cause a conflagration.
This is pure politics, Malta style and there is an enormous overhanging wave of private and public enmities very eager to settle scores. An extra word or two may inflate tempers and a word or two that get swallowed may temper hotheads.
Prime Minister Muscat termed it a discussion in a pastizzi outlet. We would not be so dismissive. The former politicians involved remain very much in the national focus, and not just because of their official roles at MCST and as Commissioner for Laws. They should have been the first to realize they now have responsibilities coming from their official roles which should preclude them from acting like tribunes of the people.
Dr Muscat also commented, rather acidly, that the Leader of the Opposition showed a curious twisted appreciation by calling for an inquiry on this incident and not on the continuing revelations emerging on oil procurement and the like. He is right in this and we note that oil procurement will now be the subject of a proper parliamentary inquiry beginning even before the end of the summer recess.
Meanwhile, everyone is free to do as he feels like and to live the way he wants to, but boys of 50 or more are expected to behave as men of 50 or more, rather than as teenagers flying the coop.