Prime Minister Robert Abela lost his cool during Monday’s parliamentary sitting.

It was the day when a Court of Appeal confirmed an original judgment which annulled the deal the Labour government – then with Joseph Muscat as Prime Minister and Konrad Mizzi as Health Minister – reached for the transfer of three public hospitals to be run by Vitals, which later passed on the incumbency to Stewart Healthcare.

Speaking in Parliament in the afternoon, Abela was again trying to defend the indefensible, a deal which has cost the public €400 million, a deal which has embarrassed the whole Labour movement and about which we still need to learn more.

But a flustered Abela, in the heat of the argument he was making to try to limit the damage, made one extremely dangerous statement. Once again, the judiciary was his target and, it’s unfortunate to say, it is not the first time that Abela has openly attacked judges and magistrates.

What Abela said was the following: “When a member of the judiciary does not rule in the way they (the Opposition) want, they and the civil society led by the brother of the man sitting in front of me, break them, destroy them, humiliate them and use all forms of intimidation so that, next time, so as not to be subjected to such vicious criticism, they will judge in their favour.”

First of all it is clear that what Robert Aquilina is doing is getting under the PM’s skin. Aquilina, who leads NGO Repubblika, is the “brother” of Nationalist MP Karol Aquilina. That a PM stoops so low so as to point fingers at an individual who is not a member of Parliament and who, therefore, cannot defend himself in the House, already exposes how far the PM goes to attack those who dare to speak up against all that is wrong in the country.

Secondly, Abela’s words mean that he believes that judges and magistrates are influenced by what is said about them, and are unable to take unbiased decisions based solely on the law. This, in itself, is already a heavy attack on the independence of the judiciary.

But there is an even worse subtle message behind what Abela said. He is telling judges and magistrates that judgments against the government have not gone unnoticed. He is also telling them that they are weak and afraid of criticism, and that they rule according to public opinion and pressure, and not according to what the law dictates. He is attributing to them political motives behind their decisions.

In other words, he is telling them to rule in favour of the government, where the government is a party to the case.

While on the surface Abela appears to be defending the judiciary against what he describes as “intimidation”, he is the one who is intimidating them and trying to influence their decisions.

When a Prime Minister goes to such lengths to put pressure on the judiciary – and, we repeat, it is not the first time that he has done so – we are edging even closer to having a government which has total control.

We are already experiencing a situation in which the government has so much influence in the way some institutions work, with the judiciary remaining as the last bastion between rule of law and Castille’s absolute power.

What Abela said last Monday is an attempt to break down that last bastion.