Joseph Muscat promises Konrad Mizzi a nice little nest egg courtesy of the Malta Tourism Authority (MTA).  The Commissioner for Standards concludes from his investigation that Muscat is accountable for this erroneous decision.  The Speaker, Anglu Farrugia, gets the ex-PM off the hook and lets him go off to play in his sandpit.

Robert Abela sees that the view of the horizon is not pleasing him.  Prof. Edward Scicluna’s seat is to be contested in the by-election amongst some rather contentious candidates.  Contentious for the Labour Party but candidates that had previously been voted for by the public in the general election of 2017. 

Let the games begin.  Gavin Gulia is called to throw in his nomination, although he is currently the chairman of the MTA with all the benefits that the position entails.  He is a decoy.  He wins the casual election over Charles Azzopardi, previously a PL contestant who has since revised his choice of party and now leans to the PN, and over Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando, himself an ex-PN MP who buddied up with Joseph Muscat.

Gulia is elected from amongst the three other nominees and is sworn into Parliament, saying he is resigning his lucrative position at the MTA in order to serve his constituents. 

No, not so.  Tap on the shoulder from Abela or previously conspired, Gulia turns around and resigns not from the MTA but from Parliament. 

Why so much fuss, some may cry.  Three leaders of the PN have been co-opted into Parliament in the past.  Other occasions too can be found where a co-option took place.  Bernard Grech was not just plucked from the street and told to take his seat.  He was scrutinized for suitability, survived a dirty phone call from PM Robert Abela who reported him to the Commissioner of Inland Revenue and contested for the vote amongst thousands of eligible members of the PN, winning that election to become leader of the party and therefore leader of the Opposition in the House. 

The same can be said of Adrian Delia who also contested and won.

But lately, when it comes to the Labour Party it is like a revolving door or a game of tag.  Pushed up, pushed out and pushed sideways.  A wonder-bra doesn’t even come close to their amount of push and lift.

What flies in the face of the public is that it is not just a case of over-milking the co-option clause.  It is a blatant disregard of the public’s voice and choice in what is meant to be a democratic country and election.  It is the complicity involved in coming up with such a game of manipulation and nihilistic interest and finding the people to go along with it.  The low standards that come with it. There is no purpose other than self-serving politics.

Take President Trump’s incitement of the crowd, basically encouraging them to go to the extreme and cause chaos and violent protest.  The people of Congress were outraged not just at the unspeakable incident that led to a threat on the life of the Representatives of the People, Law enforcement officers and staff but intrinsically on the pre-meditated plan to instigate the attack, complete with de-railing the security services.

What Abela has done, is dress the fox in sheep’s clothing, using a respected person, well known for his work with the disabled, in order to silence the condemnation of the plot.  Like so many things in Malta, we stop short of shaming and naming because of some mitigating fact about a person.  This has nothing to do with Oliver Scicluna, although in the past, many others would have seen the ploy for what it was and felt they could better serve the people in their current job, rather than be compromised by Abela.  It is a matter of integrity.  But Labour has a huge arsenal to achieve their goal, using as they do, without any hesitation, both the laws and the coffers of the land.

Here, Abela once again has shown that the country is only Labour and Labour is the country.  How pathetic.  How utterly misogynistic, how Mintoffian.  What does he think won Labour the election with the big margin in 2013 and 2017?  Wasn’t it that Joseph Muscat reached out to the disenfranchised Nationalist or swing voters and promised something resembling a more mature, more accountable Labour party in Government?  Granted that that all flew out of the window in a matter of days, but here Robert Abela is behaving with the same instinct of the 80s and dragging us back to the dark days but dressing it up as the fruit of the tree that is the great opportunity given to the Labour party by the public to do what they will in order to keep Malta Red (over blue).

I wonder how Prof. Edward Scicluna feels about the way his seat has been tossed away?  It reduces the value and legacy of his work.  Nobody is irreplaceable, we know.  But to bargain off his seat in this way is downright cheap.

No amount of sympathy is going to cover up this game.  Oliver Scicluna, if he was clear in his vocation, should refuse the seat and then contest the next election. Just as Jeffery Pullicino Orlando burnt himself with his false allegiances, so too, Scicluna will probably not be able stand the public opinion in the next election and fail to be elected if he accepts the seat now.

Parliament is not a social club or an NGO.  You do not just come and go by signing up to membership of the Labour Party.  In the same way, Joseph Muscat does not stop being accountable for his actions as Prime Minister simply because he resigned.  If that were the case, why is Trump being impeached?  It is because actions continue to matter long after the person has left office. 

We have had several other occasions when we saw the partisan decisions of the Speaker of the House. This time he has fallen to a new low, letting down a nation and failing to uphold the very highest institute that he should protect.

Like the Covid cases numbers that remain in the three digits, like the vaccines that remain on the shelf, the fanciful statements that the Prime Minister keeps making, about everything turning into a picnic, he is one sandwich short.

Parliament, Prime Minister, is not a swap shop.  Next time too that you are irritated by a contradictory view, think twice before removing a Kenneth Grech or you may end up in a pair of shorts instead of long trousers.  They may be fine for the Ragusa Marina but not quite the dress code for Castille.