Why was Alex Borg so offended by ">what I wrote? Because it was the truth. And nothing offends like the truth. (Labour's Trojan horse, The Malta Independent on Sunday, 6 April)
If Alex Borg was feeling pangs of conscience and wanted to convey his support to the Speaker he could have done it in confidence. If Borg's message of solidarity to the Speaker was an act of genuine decency and human civility he could have done it privately. But Borg bragged about it. He informed the nation about it. And he did it while his parliamentary group was standing up to a bullying, hostile governing party intent on destroying the Opposition. He did it while his party was fighting for its right to have its voice heard. He did it while his party was confronting a manifestly partisan Speaker slavishly loyal to Labour. Meanwhile Borg was busy undermining his own party for personal publicity.
Besides, Alex Borg didn't bother challenging the Speaker over his partisan decisions to protect the governing party and its MPs found guilty by the Standards commissioner of breaching ethics. Borg never demanded that the Speaker treat the Opposition fairly, pointing out that the Opposition represents a huge chunk of the electorate.
Bernard Grech was mounting a brave resistance to the Speaker's partisan decisions and his constant suppression of Opposition requests for discussions of issues that embarrass the government. The PN Leader was rallying the troops to resist Labour's attempt to damage the Opposition. While Grech was working hard to put up a show of unity, Alex Borg publicly criticised his colleagues' behaviour in parliament and openly took the side of the Speaker. And bragged about it. Indeed he broadcast it to the entire nation.
That's not only overt disloyalty to his parliamentary group; it is defiant public subordination to the Leader's direction. This wasn't just subtly undermining the leadership behind closed doors. Borg made no attempt to conceal his efforts to reinforce Labour's portrayal of the Opposition as a divided party. On the contrary he made it a point to give interviews to the press, gifting Labour exactly what it wanted - some hint that the PN was divided and that the Opposition Leader lacked the authority to control his MPs. The young first term MP not only defied the leader and betrayed his parliamentary colleagues but did it wilfully and publicly. Of course Labour pounced. Robert Abela exploited Alex Borg's public disloyalty in his speeches, repeatedly bringing up Borg's staggering audacity and impertinence.
Borg had an opportunity to wreck Labour's narrative of disunity within the PN when Bernard Grech visited Gozo. But Borg didn't turn up, reinforcing Labour's claims. Borg insisted he had a far more important appointment he couldn't miss.
What harms the Opposition is not critical opinion pieces, it's how its MPs behave that damages the party. It's how MPs react to criticism. Lashing out at a columnist instead of rationally and calmly addressing the criticism doesn't earn credibility.
Of course politicians are ambitious people. Everybody accepts that. There's nothing wrong with dreaming of being party leader one day. There's nothing wrong with putting your name forward when that vacancy arises, usually after an electoral defeat. But that's very different from publicly defying your own parliamentary group and contributing, whether intentionally or unwittingly, to the electoral defeat which will create that vacancy.
Whether you'd want a leader who thinks politicians should break the rules, as Alex Borg recommended, or one who endorsed and praises Donald Trump, as Borg does, is another matter. But somebody who admires a President who consistently denies election results and who incited a mob to attack the Capitol would probably not be the best choice for a country's democracy. A politician who looks up to a leader with clear autocratic tendencies should worry any citizen who values democracy. Pointing that out is hardly an "attack".
Besides, Alex Borg should explain to the public why he attended the ARC conference in London, a gathering of right wing populists denying climate change, attacking gender rights and celebrating Trumpism. The highlight of that conference was climate-change denier Jordan Peterson interviewing far-right politician Nigel Farage. It included Peterson's claims that "homosexuality is a deviation". Ayaan Hirsi Ali claimed that Donald Trump is the embodiment of the Christian message as written in Genesis, Leviticus and Romans. Baroness Philippa Stroud, the co-founder of ARC declared that "diversity, equity and inclusion are harming the West's Christian cultural foundations. Climate change isn't a crisis".
Did Borg pay the 1500 pound registration fee for that conference? Why did an MP form a pro-EU party attend a conference organised by the ARC, a project of a pro-Brexit freemarket think tank funded by Legatum Ltd, a sprawling Dubai-based private investment fund?
The striking irony is that some of those PN MPs who backed Alex Borg's claims of victimhood, like Joe Giglio and Adrian Delia, commented that the columnist "should be pulling the same rope". That should apply to MPs like Alex Borg who should certainly be pulling the same rope as his parliamentary colleagues and not publicly undermining his leader. But to expect independent columnists to owe your party any allegiance is sheer arrogance.
Disturbingly some PN MPs are now aligning with Labour ministers like Owen Bonnici and Labour's powerful propaganda machine to harass and intimidate critics. Regrettably it's been done before. Who can forget the relentless persecution that MPs levelled at Daphne Caruana Galizia? Some called her "bicca blogger", others the Bidnija witch.
Alex Borg didn't deny any of the facts in the article - he can't. The only avenue left to him is to play the victim of a "senseless attack" and incite the rage of loyalists against his critic. They duly responded with the usual vitriol. Depressingly the majority of them hadn't even read a word of that article.
Having one political party vilifying critics and investigative journalists is bad enough. Having MPs from both parties doing it is not only puerile, it's utterly corrosive to our democracy. Destroying our democracy may be in the interest of the ruling party. It's surely not in the interest of the Opposition and it's definitely not in the interest of the country.
What's more - that level of recklessness is dangerous. That's a lesson that Daphne Caruana Galizia's tragic end should have taught the entire nation. But some MPs refuse to learn it.