Dr Etienne Grech, Family Doctor  and Labour MP.

Whenever the Leader of the Opposition lambasts the health sector, he somehow always manages to look like a wayward child running around with his shoe laces undone. He does not take heed of the knowing adults who advise him to tread with caution, to stop for a moment and stoop down to tie up those laces. He prefers to run with head held high and nose in the air, because it is easier and faster.

As one can imagine, this endeavour rarely ends in success. When he does not offer solutions or fails to recognise progress, he ends up running around in circles. When he criticises a situation created by the previous Nationalist government, he ends up running full-tilt into a wall. To his credit, he had always managed to remain on his feet, even if barely so.

However Busuttil’s wayward endeavour has recently taken a turn for the worse. This time he did not run around in circles or into a wall. He tripped up in his own shoelace, which he had left undone. Since he was running with all his might, the fall was inevitable, and it was a hard one. Busuttil swiftly fell flat on his face, without even the time to stagger for balance.

His undone shoelace was none other than his own MP, Professor Albert Fenech. A star candidate for the 2013 elections and currently the PN’s speaker on mental health, Fenech has tripped up the Leader of the Opposition in a fall from which the recovery is bound to be extremely difficult.

Over the past year Dr Busuttil mounted a harsh campaign against the €200 million private investment in St Luke’s Hospital and the Gozo General Hospital. He ran around in circles when he constantly failed to concede at least a few benefits which would be derived from the arrangement. He ran straight into a wall when he criticised an investment which a Nationalist government had failed to obtain, leaving both hospitals in a shocking state of disrepair.

Now Dr Busuttil has finally tripped up in his own shoelace as it became known that Fenech, one of his own MPs, would be leading the cardiology hospital for the private consortium investing in Malta’s health sector. To add insult to injury, the news was first hinted at by the PN’s own newspaper, which tried to tone it down by giving the false impression that Fenech would be opening up his own private hospital.

When interviewed by the Nationalist media, Professor Fenech said that the project is one which will have high standards, both in terms of equipment as well as expertise. The Labour party immediately clarified that the project mentioned by the PN paper was the private investment the Opposition had spent long months criticising, even attacking in a base manner the private investors themselves.

It was already difficult to understand the Opposition’s line of thought, if there ever was one, in lambasting an investment which would raise the level of Malta’s health sector while keeping it free of charge, and in the meanwhile also open up a niche for medical tourism. However what now beggars belief is how Dr Busuttil could criticise this project in such a manner in the full knowledgethat one of his MPs would be leading part of it.