Joseph Muscat had told us that Malta needed Labour to win the election three years ago much like Eddie Fenech Adami did way back in 1987. He said this before the election, in full electoral flow. He said it to make sure he won over the swing voters, the ones who usually backed the PN but had drifted towards Labour.

Joseph Muscat won big because the people believed him. His words appealed even to those who usually cast their votes for the PN candidates. His appeal was intra-party. His victory was complete. His triumph was superb.

He duped many, too many. Many believed he was the new man to take us out of our desert, our famine, our misery. He was the man to sweep all problems aside. The marketing was superb, the spin perfectly swallowed.

This was his victory and not the party’s: he had a team around him whom he lured from different places, including people who used to be PN supporters like Manuel Mallia. This was, Muscat said, because he wanted to create a movement to sweep away all cobwebs of old and give us a new style of politics where anyone with talent would move up the ladder, regardless of political affiliation.

The more Muscat spun the more people fell for him. But he wanted his people – Konrad Mizzi, Silvio Scerri, Keith Schembri – not because they would help the party or the country but because they would create a party all of their own in Joseph Muscat’s own image.

Joseph Muscat’s movement has obviously been just a ploy to build up his cronies, his close buddies, while getting rid of people like Anġlu Farrugia, Michael Falzon, Karmenu Vella and Marie Louise Coleiro Preca. Those people – if old style Mintoffian – were not easily swayed by his whims and desire for power. He wanted to wield power over the party and the country so that all was under his control.

To win as handsomely as he did, Muscat spun a web of lies that people believed.

People believed we were in a bad way – when really we hadn’t had it so good for ages. If Lawrence Gonzi and his team had defects these three years of Labour government have proved that Joseph Muscat and his cronies do not only have defects – they are deficient in every way and truly do not care about the country’s good.

Let us analyse Muscat’s statement regarding Eddie Fenech Adami in depth. Muscat said that he was needed as much as Eddie was needed way back in 1987 because he knows no one like Fenech Adami could have made the country function as it did after it had been torn asunder.

Muscat made it seem as though Lawrence Gonzi’s government had reduced Malta to the situation it was in when Fenech Adami took over. Muscat, through his ploys, promises and visceral propaganda, was given carte blanche to change the politics of Malta in a positive way.

This is what Eddie Fenech Adami managed to do – he turned Malta from a Third World country, which had practically lost its democratic credentials, into a fast-developing country. He gave the country a real breath of fresh air; he built up a country that was in tatters, looked down on by all abroad, into a country with a robust economy which had a great future in the EU.

Go back to 1990 – three years after Eddie Fenech Adami was voted in together with his team of PN ministers. The country was flourishing, booming, and everyone was smiling. The future was all aglow.

That is what happens when a government is serious, when issues are tackled, when a true statesman comes on the scene.

Compare it to today, three years after Joseph Muscat won his famous, now quickly turning to a notorious victory. The whole country is in shock, in total and sleepless shock, not just wondering what other scandal will be unearthed, but wondering how the country can pull out of the worst scandal ever to rock its very existence.

And yet Joseph Muscat, who won by stealth and by spin, thinks he can spin out of this too. But the people have had enough of his useless words. They want action, true and proper action to condemn scandals and move this country forward not back to when it was riven by corruption and unease.

Malta truly needs another Eddie Fenech Adami to put it back on track – and the PN has found him in Simon Busuttil.