The weeks leading up to Christmas are supposed to be a time when politics slow down, when people are able to get their mind off such things and focus on spending time with family.
This year, however, this does not seem to be the case. Joseph Muscat’s hard-headed decision to stay on as PM until January is stopping many from embracing the Christmas spirit.
Instead of spending time with family or going out shopping, people are protesting in the streets, and barricades are set up outside Castille and, up until recently, Parliament.
Shops have had to close early on some nights due to these protests, but it must be made clear that such an action is not the protester’s fault, but the fault of those they are protesting against.
Indeed, posts are being passed around by Muscat’s own supporters not to decorate their homes for Christmas, as a show of support for the embattled Prime Minister.
That aside, businesses are suffering. The government has long placed itself on a pedestal, calling itself pro-business. Yet, when push is coming to shove, it is showing that this is not the case.
A study by the GRTU - Malta Chamber of SMEs, found that businesses have been hard-hit by the ongoing political crisis, with 65% reporting plummeting sales.
The study across 50 different economic sectors from all over Malta has revealed the “devastating impact” the past two weeks of instability have brought. The GRTU said that business sales have dropped everywhere with Valletta shops feeling the brunt. “Political instability is killing businesses,” the organisation said.
A pro-business government would not let businesses suffer at such an important time of year. This is not a pro-business government. Indeed the PL MPs and ministers, by failing to take action when it was called for, in order to dismiss Muscat immediately, lost their right to claim that they are pro-business.
How can a country go on as if it is business as usual, when a man charged in connection with the murder of a journalist is pointing the finger at the PM’s very own Chief of Staff – who Muscat has for years defended – and when the middleman who was given a Presidential pardon claims that he was given a government job, for doing no work whatsoever?
Muscat doesn’t have a leg to stand on. People view the authorities as being under Muscat’s thumb, and the longer he remains involved, the more doubt will be cast on the outcome of the case should politicians be found not to be involved by the authorities.
For the umpteenth time, Muscat must leave now. No matter what he says or does, he will always be remembered as the PM under whose watch a journalist was brutally murdered, and who defended people who were facing serious allegations of corruption and wrongdoing. He should leave now and stop dragging the country down with him.
It is not business as usual, but his immediate resignation is the only way in which the country can start returning to the road of normality.