Most people - me included - are mystified as to why the Labour Party chose to be represented by Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando last Friday on Xarabank. The only explanation I can come up with is that after a really bad three weeks in which tension has been at explosive levels and a lot has been going badly wrong, the people making these decisions are not thinking straight or not thinking at all.

Some have argued - Norman Vella is one, in his blog - that getting Pullicino Orlando to go was a deliberate choice, a considered one, and that he was sent to sabotage the discussion and keep it away from the touchy topics of what Manuel did, what Joseph said, and what they both failed consummately to say and do. But after some thought, I can't really agree, though there may have been a little bit of that. I think the real reason is that nobody else wanted to go. Toni Abela couldn't get out of it because his opposite number was going and it would have looked cowardly if he didn't. But they couldn't find a single pro-Labour newspaper columnist willing to go there and stick his neck out on behalf of a driver with a gun and his shady boss. Because the interesting thing is that most of us share roughly the same opinion, overall, on this matter and it's only the details that divide us. Nobody wants to break a lance for Manuel Mallia because they don't like what he did, what he's been doing, and they don't particularly like him. Even Labour-leaning or wholesale -rooting-for-Labour newspaper columnists can see this mess for what it is and they think it's terrible, really bad news.

So the Labour Party was left with Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando, who is not a newspaper columnist but chairman of the Malta Council for Science and Technology, and so shouldn't be doing that kind of thing. But nobody else wanted it and so they sent him: "Ring Jeffrey. He loves the limelight. Pump him up and tell him to go for it, and off he'll go." That's probably what happened. The fact that almost no Labour supporters turned up in the audience backs up that theory, I would say. If Pullicino Orlando were some part of a calculated and carefully measured Labour tactic, the party would have followed through by bulking out the audience with a lot of vociferous people instructed to clap and cheer him on. Instead, he was booed to oblivion by the other side.

The Labour Party might also have said, "U ijja, so we have to make do with Jeffrey. But maybe we can turn it to our advantage and have the sort of showdown we had when we sent Franco Debono to face Simon Busuttil." But that was a very different situation - Franco Debono had a seat in the House on the PN ticket and not the Labour ticket, and that was supposed to be a party to party debate between the two deputy leaders. So obviously, Simon Busuttil had refused to go on. Also, the context was completely different - Labour was in Opposition and the country was edging towards a general election. Now, Labour is in government - they are the ones in power - and so their behaviour has got to be different. The tricks, stunts and gimmicks that are of value to a party in Opposition are a dead loss for a party in government. They don't work at all and, rather the opposite, go against the interests of those who try to use them.

The party in government has got to be serious. Anything less and it loses credibility fast. The Labour Party sent out lots of negative messages by resorting to Pullicino Orlando, the main one being that they could find nobody better or more suitable, and the other one being that they don't respect the audience and their supporters, who would have felt embarrassed at being represented by somebody so substandard from the political skip. Then to make matters worse for Labour, Pullicino Orlando spent the next two hours plus shouting, making spiteful remarks and becoming increasingly aggressive and bitter. Tension, hate and anger were coming off him in waves. That is not at all how to win an audience over. He reeked of unpleasantness, he was not in the least bit likeable, and he made no effort at all to defend Labour's cause properly and coherently. True, everybody ended up talking about Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando and his abysmal performance instead of talking about Manuel Mallia, Joseph Muscat and theirs, and that might have been the plan as Norman Vella wrote. But all this served to do was open up yet another rich seam of trouble for Labour. Viewers disliked it. And I suspect that for the first time ever, watching that sorry show, lots of people might well have realised that there's something not quite right with that man. Labour chose badly, and now has one more thing to regret.