At the last general election Muscat’s Labour Party campaigned in the name of sweetness and light. Gone, gone forever, was the vindictive Labour of the golden years. Over the last three and a half years, the mask has been peeling off. Now, Labour has decided it won’t even bother with pretences.
Gone is the gospel of love and the prayer of St Francis (make me a channel of your peace, etc.) that Muscat once quoted. We’re back to the Old Labour Testament.
They are vowing an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.
After Leo Brincat managed to scrape through the vote of the EU committee last week, leaving himself and the party he belongs to very sore, this week he failed.
Actually, he failed miserably. With 381 votes against him in the European Parliament and only 229 in his favour, Leo Brincat was given an unequivocal thumbs down. Even if the 58 who abstained were to be added to the votes in favour (something Labour would do, as it did with the vote of our EU referendum), Brincat would still be 94 votes short.
In a normal country, run by a democratic government with a sense of what is right and what is not, this story would have stopped there.
However, since Muscat is running the country like a freak show, the last thing he intends to do is give up and make Leo Brincat withdraw his nomination. Isn’t it enough? Of course not, Muscat knows no boundaries.
He has humiliated and embarrassed us all but he will still persist in his error. We have been told that Brincat will now be judged by the Council of Ministers.
Of course, this will be a double-edged sword. If the Council of Ministers votes against Brincat, this will be the ultimate humiliation. If, on the other hand, the Council votes in his favour, Muscat would have managed to create an institutional conflict within the EU, pitting the Parliament against the Council. And this, on the eve of Malta’s EU Presidency.
As expected, this Leo Brincat story has brought out the bile and anger from within the Labour Party ranks. Former Labour Party official Alfred Grixti has vented out his frustration on Facebook.
Grixti, the CEO of the Foundation for Social Welfare Services, openly declared his “eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth” operating principle. How sad. A person in his position, working for a very important government entity, would be made to resign instantly. But not under Muscat’s watch.
Grixti, after all, is the same person who vented his anger (once again on Facebook), when he unceremoniously told Evarist Bartolo to “shut up” about the Panama Papers scandal... because the leader had spoken.
The irony of it all is that Grixti is pointing his finger at the PN MEPs and the rest of the European Popular Party MEPs when the maths clearly shows that since the EPP has a total of 215 MEPs, there are 166 votes against Leo Brincat that came from other parties. In addition, the recent comments given to this paper by a senior Social Democrat MEP, Ana Gomes, clearly indicates that Brincat did not even convince the members of his very own party within the EU structure.
Perhaps Alfred Grixti, and others like him, should do their homework right before pointing fingers. This vote is not about Leo Brincat per se but about Konrad Mizzi and his involvement in the Panama Papers, which has made him the sole EU minister to have his name written in mud, in what is being considered as the world’s largest tax evasion and money laundering scandal.
Mr Grixti should also keep in mind that Ms Gomes happens to be the Vice-Chair of the Committee of Inquiry to investigate money laundering, tax avoidance and tax evasion, which also happens to be the committee which will investigate the Panama Papers.
Simon Busuttil had warned Leo Brincat before the vote of confidence in Konrad Mizzi. As a nominee for the EU auditing post, he should have at least abstained from his vote. Saying now that he had no choice then is very simply not justifiable.
Joseph Muscat is not going to take my advice or that of Simon Busuttil. But he should take heed of the warning made to him by Ana Gomes. Vengeance has absolutely nothing to do with it.