I have never quite understood why politicians who are at each other’s throats for 350 days a year are expected to be jolly and charming to each other for the other two weeks around Christmas and the start of the new year. Why are they expected to be nice to people they would like to see pinned out under glass? It’s so false, so hypocritical. And I imagine that’s why some were upset (or rather, pretending to be) when the deputy Opposition leader, Beppe Fenech Adami, blew up in parliament last Monday and bawled out the Justice Minister, the increasingly creepy Owen Bonnici.

He more or less told him to keep his mouth shut, that as part of the most corrupt government Malta has ever known, Bonnici is in no position to be critical of anyone else. While some complained about Fenech Adami’s tone and approach, most people I spoke to were delighted to see, at last, some anger that reflects what they feel. Lack of rage and fury, of scandalised tones and shock-horror, on the Opposition benches has served to do nothing else but help the government normalise a desperately abnormal situation.

As for Owen Bonnici, there’s something very strange going on there. He has been shifted progressively, over the last four years, from the outskirts of government to the core, the inner circle, even being put in charge of Identity Malta, the second power-house of shady government operations after Konrad Mizzi’s Projects Malta and Joseph Muscat’s and Keith Schembri’s Office of the Prime Minister. I described him as “creepy”, and don’t quite know where that adjective came from, except that it’s the one which springs unbidden to mind when I watch him speak.

There’s something about his facial expression, his tone and the timbre of his voice that would make any sensible person back off and stay away (clearly, Janice Bartolo is not a sensible person). I am left with the feeling that there is a lot going on beneath the surface and that none of it is pleasant. He strikes me as somebody coming to terms with the sleaziness of those around him and with his own not quite savoury attitude. I may be wrong here, but the increasingly dead and motionless facial expression he wears habitually is that of somebody who has already made more compromises with himself than he is entirely happy to make.

And as per usual, on Tuesday, the Opposition leader, the Prime Minister, the President and the Archbishop (the only Constitutional figures missing were the Chief Justice and the Speaker of the House, the latter being off again on one of his foreign expeditions) got together to preach at us at the start of a charity fundraising event to mark the festive season. Can they be more sickening? Charity is no excuse for the Opposition leader to compromise himself by joining the Prime Minister to speak of peace and love. That only serves to undermine his message of government corruption, of thievery and chicanery. You don’t press the pause button for a few days of Yuletide and then go back to speaking about scandal.

If the Prime Minister is so scandalous (and he is), the last thing the Opposition leader should be doing is standing side by side with him talking about love and unity. This state of affairs is beyond ridiculous. And as for that Marie Louise Coleiro Preca, her term in office can’t be over soon enough. The place is littered badly enough with dinosaurs from the ghastly, corrupt and violent Mintoffian era as it is. Watching her play Mother Theresa in an assortment of veils with a martyred expression, while sitting in comfort in her place with a retinue of butlers and servants, makes me think of anything but peace and love. What a travesty of justice that is.

As for Joseph Muscat, wearing his awful black coat indoors as usual, like a teenager from the sticks out on the town in Paceville on New Year’s Eve, his talk of peace and love is an insulting sham. Since 1992, he has either worked for (as a reporter and show host) or been responsible for (as party leader), the Labour Party’s intensely malign and vicious media machine, its television and radio stations in particular. What peace and love do we get out of Super One and the people who work for it? What peace and love did we get from Muscat himself?

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