First a fake hijack and now a fake power outage

At least, that’s the general sentiment.

The Opposition leader says on Sunday morning that the proof Malta doesn’t need another power station, because the interconnector does the job, is in the fact that even with maximum demand in the coldest weather, the power hasn’t blown.

And then some hours later, there’s widespread power outage at the very conveniently scheduled time of 1am, when almost everyone is in bed and businesses are closed (and heaters are off). What did it look like? It looked like they spent a couple of hours discussing whether it would be best to throw that switch at 1am so that they could go home to bed in good time, or at 3am to be totally sure everyone is asleep and all bars and restaurants are closed, which they mainly are anyway, on a Sunday-to-Monday night in bleakest January.

“It’s the interconnector,” the head of government communications tweeted. “They had bad weather in Sicily.”

But take a look at social media and the comments boards. People believe that, whether it’s true or not, as much as they believed that hijack. This is what things have come to for the once shiny Muscat government and its 36,000-vote majority. Almost everyone seems to believe that they threw a switch and blacked out half the country to make Busuttil look bad and Konrad look good.