Just like happens with Eurovision, we’re through to the final night.
Leo Brincat yesterday succeeded where Toni Abela failed. Months ago, the European Parliament committee had blocked the nominations from three countries, including Malta, for a variety of reasons including the fact there was not one woman among them.
Yesterday, the same committee faced three men and no whimper of protest was heard.
At the end, Leo Brincat scraped through with 11 votes in favour, nine against and one abstention. Mr Brincat’s result stood out against that of the other two contenders, from Portugal and Cyprus, by being conspicuously worse. Lazaros Lazarou of Cyprus obtained 19 votes in favour and one against, with one abstention. Joao Figueiredo of Portugal obtained 19 votes in favour, none against, and two abstentions.
Even more than the final result, it is what he said that matters to us here in Malta. To all extents and purposes, freed from ministerial collective responsibility, he disowned the Muscat government.
He said he voted in favour of Konrad Mizzi in the vote of confidence because his hands were ‘tied’ – a sound bite that will reverberate across Europe, although he later explained away what this binding of hands meant.
He said that if he were Konrad Mizzi he would either resign or suspend himself.
Later, in comments to the media in Brussels, he said he considered resigning in the wake of the Konrad Mizzi scandal but then he did not “because you are a hero for a day and spend the rest of your life in the wilderness”.
For us Maltese, it then gets worse. We heard from him the standard PL response to anyone who points out the hardline MLP vote against EU accession – how after the majority of the people voted for accession, MLP dropped its long years’ standing opposition. We may have heard it so much we have sort of accepted it. But foreigners always remain sceptical how could so Eurosceptic views become all of a sudden Europhile.
For us Maltese who remember Leo Brincat as part of the Dom Mintoff cabinet in the 1980s, seeing him on the threshold of one of the EU’s most solemn institutions is a very wry sight. There was no ounce of regret in what he said yesterday and one does not remember any profound apology for collective responsibility then. This rankles.
What is indeed surprising is the sudeden change that seems to have come over Mr Brincat once he was free from Cabinet collective responsibility and the party whip. In 1593, the future Henry IV is said to have uttered: "Paris vaut bien une messe" - Paris is well worth a Mass.