For the first time since he fought on the losing side in the referendum on EU membership, Joseph Muscat is facing massive (and massing) opposition to his plans to put his Jordanian contact's business college on agricultural land at Zonqor Point. And for the first time, too, many of those who voted for him have seen, with shock and revulsion, the true nature of their erstwhile hero: evicting farmers with sarcastic indifference in return for Jordanian cash, not bothering to inform them beforehand let alone discuss things with them, and then breezily saying that he'll 'put them' somewhere else.
For the first time, I have to wonder whether he's losing his touch and why he's losing it. I never suspected Joseph Muscat of having a conscience or of being motivated by the public good, but I've got to admit that he's pretty smart at pretending to have the one and be the other. So how did he misjudge this thing so badly?
I don't mean the project itself, or dumping it on agricultural land. There isn't much that's mysterious about those aspects. You could see the cartoon dollar signs in the eyes of all of them at that signing ceremony at the Auberge de Castille. Only the two Americans dispatched by DePaul University looked awkward and embarrassed. As for the rest, the only appropriate soundtrack for a video of that signing ceremony would be a cascade of coins from a one-armed bandit.
No, what I mean is - how did Muscat make such a gross miscalculation of the impact his surprise announcement would have on the population in general and special-interest groups in particular? Could he have foreseen that the lion would lie down with the lamb for the express purpose of laying into his plans and trying to stop them? I think the prime minister was so impressed, himself, with his Jordanian moneybags and the plans for a college - he was positively glowing on camera as the Palestinian immigration consultant who works for the Jordanian moneybags praised him like a clever schoolboy - that he misjudged the way other people would see it.
Why on earth would be have staged that theatrical signing ceremony if not because he thought he was going to stun us all and awe us with his amazing ability to haul in Jordanian contractors en route to Spain? And he must have thought that we wouldn't be able or willing to distinguish between a proper university and a 'for visas and profit' business college owned by a hotel developer and designed for people in their 20s from the Middle East, North Africa and the Gulf states who want to get in to Europe (otherwise he would have built it in Jordan).
Muscat and his ministers Chris Cardona and Evarist Bartolo were just so smug when that signing ceremony was over, and then after the initial few hours of slightly doubting reportage in the press, they were hit by a tidal wave of mockery and criticism which rapidly turned into full-blown scorn and disgust. Within days, hunters were cooperating with environmentalists, AD politicians with renegade Labour MPs with Nationalist MPs with Jesuits with leftwing academics with a former secretary-general of the Malta Labour Party with the Archbishop with pro-Labour newspaper columnists with anti-Labour newspaper columnists with farmers with newspaper editors with a Labour deputy mayor and with so many people in the streets and cafes.
Suddenly, even Labour politicians are feeling awkward about defending and justifying these plans. At best, they just say nothing and avoid the subject. They are not even cluttering up their Facebook pages with 'statuses' in defence of this mess. With the usual exception of Luciano Busuttil, who finds it difficult to understand that he's there to serve his constituents and not his political party, they can see the anger and think it best not to defy it. And let's face it, there are probably many on the Labour benches in parliament who are wondering to themselves and perhaps in the privacy of their home why in heaven's name they should have got themselves into so much trouble and whether their party owes Hani Hasan Naji Al Salah some very big favour of which they know nothing.
For the first time, Muscat has launched something he thought would receive universal admiration and score several points off his rival, and instead all he got was the rudest, angriest giant raspberry. That is a novel experience for him (with EU membership, he let his boss Sant carry the can) and I really don't think he'll be handling it at all well. We've already had the unpleasant remarks and the sarcastic comments - and some highly offensive ones, like "I'll put the farmers at St Luke's (hospital building), where Simon told me to put the university". Now stand by for what will probably evolve into a slew of downright nastiness.
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