Yesterday week was another Saturday like so many before it and undoubtedly after it: statements from the government and the Opposition like so many confetti thrown at each other.
The subject this time, like so many other Saturdays, was the relocation of the Monti to Ordnance Street.
Opposition leader Simon Busuttil led the dance by going on the spot and announcing that with him in government, the Monti would be moved back to Merchant Street.
After some time, the government came back with a statement aimed for the evening's TV news and tomorrow's paper. It released an email sent by former minister Jason Azzopardi at 4pm on election day promising the Monti people a PN government (hardly likely at that point) would guarantee a Monti in Ordnance Street by December.
That seemed that. But much later, at around 7pm if I remember correctly, the PN came back with a statement by Dr Busuttil in which he practically said that he is now head of the party and is not bound by promises made by his predecessor, so the Monti, with him as Prime Minister would go back to where it was.
Not one paper carried it, if I remember correctly, although it was covered, sort of, in the online news media.
Working on it, I thought the PN leader was at last showing some guts, swiping away a tawdry decision by the predecessor panicking in the eve of the greatest, most humiliating defeat the party ever suffered.
As far as I know, others reached the same conclusion as I did.
It was not to be. On Monday, Lawrence Gonzi appeared again in front of the Public Accounts Committee and it was back to vintage Lawrence. He was edgy, accused those on the government side of PAC of being insolent in his regard; he interrupted, made rhetorical questions, and in short turned the whole session into a wrangling match.
He did not lose the encounter, but he once again reminded people of life in Castile pre-March 2013. Subsequent facts have shown he was right in the way he acted when the oil procurement scandal came up, but by claiming it was all pre-electoral tactics he then, and now, removed the very basis for proper and in-depth investigation that stops at nothing.
If the claim was electoral, there was nothing much to be done and Dr Gonzi could claim his team was the best and had done nothing wrong.
There were other inconsistencies, if we can call them that. The basic one of course had always been the fact that Dr Gonzi had not checked his emails and 'forgot' until reminded by the government side that he had replied to an email from Cathy Farrugia, the wife of George Farrugia the 'whistleblower' of the oil procurement scandal.
Then, l-orizzont revealed on Monday morning that Tonio Fenech, who at that time was in charge of Enemalta, after Austin Gatt had been relieved of this post, was not present at the hastily-convoked Cabinet meeting which recommended a presidential pardon for Mr Farrugia. Questioned about this, Dr Gonzi said he could not remember.
Deep down, the issue was that Enemalta was in deep trouble with so much going on, even if we do not have to believe all that has been said and claimed about scandals. Dr Gonzi himself gave this a sort of authoritative credence by his half-heard remark (and maybe verging on sub judice comment), picked up by our online and our daily paper, that had he known what Tancred Tabone was up to, he would have sent him to jail.
The issue has still not run out of steam. I predict that Labour's pre-local council election campaign will consist of Austin Gatt being asked to appear before PAC.
On to the next day, 10 February, and as usual the church of St Paul Shipwreck in Valletta was the place to be for PN bigwigs. There is the PN DNA at work here, reminiscent of the days when George Borg Olivier was president of the La Vallette band club, and of the time when it was the only place for PN leaders to appear when Mintoff's bullies were out and about.
With Simon Busuttil's recent moves to ease the party from its Religio et Patria background to a more pluralistic stance in post-divorce Malta, one may have expected something else. But there was a somewhat sheepish Simon, along with past presidents and prime ministers, plus other past ministers and would-be ministers.
That was not all. On Wednesday, seemingly reinvigorated by the Pontifical Mass and all those silver and gold vestments, and the Apostolic Administrator's beautiful reading of Dun Karm's poems, Dr Busuttil was cornered while on a visit to Balzan sprung to Dr Gonzi's defence and, as our paper put it, he "drew his sword".
Saturday's pointed but disregarded distancing from his predecessor was forgotten. Instead, there was Dr Busuttil asking why the Farrugia brothers have not been arraigned yet, hinting that this was somehow linked to former minister Manuel Mallia being their lawyer -interfering in the actions of the police and the Attorney General used to be something bad the MLP used to do and the PN never.
I have no doubt that Lawrence Gonzi can defend himself and that he is personally blameless of any hint of corruption, but by the same token the fuel procurement scandal remains an open sore on the PN score sheet, an impressive example of incompetence, cronyism, and disregarding checks and balances. Labour claims the PN government's decision to insist on BWSC and heavy fuel oil was to anchor even more Malta's dependence on fuel and thus perpetuate the corruption. I do not believe this: first of all it was PN which broke new ground to get electricity from the Sicilian grid and it was the same PN which, tardily it's true, opened the way for hooking up the PV panels to the electricity grid.
But there. People believe the PL spin. They did so in pre-election times and undoubtedly they do more now. Unless PN distances itself from the past administration it will not begin to regain the lost ground.
Nor is it enough to remove the front bench faces of the past administration and put in new faces. Ever since the reshuffle, the PN machine is being led by the more enterprising new front benchers. For all their enthusiasm, they must learn, and their leader even more than them, to focus on the real issues the country is worried about, rather than their personal hobby-horses.
Want a proof of this? Look at the most recent MISCO survey or rather Insight Polls on the people's main personal concerns. They are, in order, income, immigration, cost of living, the environment, personal security, stable employment, education, health, water and electricity bills, traffic, fuel prices (that's right, in 11th place), other. And the main problems Malta is facing: again, in descending order, immigration, health, cost of living, environment, law and order, economy, education, the production of electricity, police, unemployment, public transport, and credibility. (http://www.independent.com.mt/articles/2015-02-14/business-news/Personal-income-immigration-are-main-personal-concerns-in-Malta).
Now where, I ask, have been the Opposition party's messages along these lines?
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