All the current talk is about the coming reshuffle.

Like death, everyone knows it is coming but people are quite unsure of the form it will take. Some say it will be a mere rearrangement of Cabinet posts after Minister George Vella is promoted to President.

Others have said that this coming reshuffle will slim this huge Cabinet down and will remove those ‘who have not delivered’.

In this latter version, there seems to be an element of judgement, choosing between those who are delivering and those who are not. This would seem to be the reason for the activism of some ministers who, according to widespread rumours, are in for the big chop.

It is, of course, the prime minister’s constitutional privilege to carry out or, as in the case of Lawrence Gonzi, not carry out a reshuffle. We may see, in the coming days, whether it will be a mere reassignment of seats or an out-and-out purge.

But one cannot help but wonder what the ultimate judgement on Prime Minister Joseph Muscat would be, should the same measurement being applied to the ministers ‘who have not delivered’ be applied to the prime minister.

Of course, the main judgement on that will be the one delivered by the people in the next general election, still more than four years away.

But one may still analyse the prime minister’s shouldering of the prime ministerial responsibilities over the past 11 months and make a tentative and approximate judgement.

Dr Muscat came to power last March with claims that he would be the youngest prime minister Malta has had. Then it turned out that he was only the third-youngest prime minister in Maltese history. Now, with Matteo Renzi as Italy’s new prime minister, he will not even be the youngest head of government at the next European Council.

Whatever the ‘bulldozer’ – as Renzi is known – will be doing to Italian politics remains unsure, but one may argue that over these past 11 months, Dr Muscat has shown all of his youth with its accompanying problems of immaturity and unsure judgement.

He has shown this, one may say, on that awful day when he attempted to push back asylum seekers who had landed in Malta before they had any opportunity to claim refugee status. He was at his worst then; populist, brash and unsympathetic towards real people but not towards those whose approval he was seeking – the xenophobic, anti-immigrant fringe that did not care if the asylum seekers were pushed to a watery grave. He was only stopped from sending them back via planes he had already ordered by a court injunction from Brussels.

Even before this, he had created Malta’s widest Cabinet ever; the same he is now reportedly trying to slim down. If this does happen, it will show that the formula which led to so many Cabinet posts did not work. And it will be equally difficult now to make people ministries.

Then there was the way with which Dr Muscat, while defending his ‘privileges’ as prime minister, sought to have the Leader of the Opposition condemned for a Breach of Privilege. The same scene will be played out again on Wednesday, with the two leaders facing each other across the table and with Dr Muscat insisting on his pound of flesh.

Dr Muscat has spent the better part of his first year as prime minister trying to deliver the philosopher’s stone, which will heal, as he sees it, Malta’s economic problems at one go – the Individual Investment Programme or, as it is better known, the citizenship for sale scheme.

We are now, if I remember correctly, at IIP 4.0, with changes being unannounced many a time. First, we started with the secrecy clause. Then, when the bill had been approved by Parliament and signed by the President, the secrecy clause was suddenly dropped.

Then we had that debate in the European Parliament, which saw all speakers, except the PL ones, speak with harsh words against it and which the next day saw a 90% negative vote against Malta, the delinquent state.

The government then sought to spin that it had won a victory of sorts when it came to an agreement with the Commission (not Parliament) by surrendering on the residency issue.

But now we find that the government, which refuses to discuss with the Opposition, has had to strengthen the residency clause.

But I feel that the worst decision by Dr Muscat has been in his handling of the situation at the hospital. Many think the issue here regards people waiting on stretchers or confusion at the Emergency Department.

But I have reason to believe the worst issue regards the IT infrastructure which Minister Godfrey Farrugia, maybe in an attempt to avoid the chop, unveiled yesterday with all spin stops pulled out.

Claudine Cassar, who knows her marbles, wrote on her Facebook page yesterday: “The developers at MOH must have drunk barrels full of Red Bull in the last 6 months..... However I fear it’s another kind of bull product we are witnessing here....”

And someone replied: “I confirm through first hand experience. I wasted 53 minutes last Tuesday, trying to sort out something as trivial as booking transport for my mother, who just underwent a total knee replacement and needs regular physiotherapy. First I tried the OP reception but was told to go to the small window at the entrance instead. There they insisted it had to be the reception again. After showing my canines to the receptionist the second time, he directed me to the OOP reception, since the new software update does not allow them to update records yet. In the OOP reception, after queuing again of course, I was told they cannot update the records due to the new software system. Rage level 9000 but still keeping my cool, I followed the advice to go to main reception and try my luck there. Queued again only to find out they still don't have the means to update the patient record to include a mere booking for transportation for two follow-up appointments. Ended up at customer care, way behind the scenes in an office, communicating the request to the software developers via email so they would update the records themselves. Luckily, they knew how to do it themselves.”

It does not seem the media present yesterday asked searching questions of the minister. So, instead of asserting, I can only ask:

-            Is it true that the new system is incompatible with the previous system, so everything has to be done from scratch? In other words, are patient files now practically obsolete? And will copying them on the new system take ages?

-            Is it true that the new system is incompatible with the main systems used abroad, so people travelling for surgery will not be able to take their history with them?

There are at least four systems used worldwide but we just had to go and develop something home-grown and play at rediscovering the wheel.

Maybe all of this is just speculation or malign spin, aimed at panicking people. People of all sorts have confirmed that the situation at the hospital has degenerated over the past year. For all Godfrey Farrugia’s mistakes, he surely does not deserve the big chop when this issue, although fronted by him yesterday, did not come from him but from the man the prime minister chose to ‘help’ him.

The question I asked in the title still stands.

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