Oh dear, Muscat cocks up again

A few days into the job as Opposition leader and Muscat is already proving that his party has promoted him beyond his abilities. Immediately he’s sworn in and takes his seat in the house, he disappears to Libya on a visit that could have waited and leaves Alfred Sant to behave as though he is still Opposition leader while the acting leader behaves like a circus clown with talk of paraventi. Then he gets back from Libya and tells us that the Labour Party is in discussion with the Libyan government, and when it reaches ‘agreements’ with the Libyan government, it will present them to the Maltese government ‘in the national interest’. Not to sound condescending or anything, but it has to be the Libyan dictatorship and Malta’s Partit Laburista to believe that bilateral negotiations take place between the government of one country and the opposition party of another. What a cock-up. I sit here and I cringe. You can send a man to Brussels but you can’t teach him anything about procedure, protocol and diplomacy.

Thursday, 9th October 2008 – 07:03CET

Muscat back from Libya, thanks Mintoff for his interest

Opposition leader Joseph Muscat late last night returned from Libya where he had talks with senior government officials on oil exploration and migration, among other subjects. He said on his return that the MLP has reached agreement with the Libyan political authorities on the setting up of two committees which will discuss cooperation in the energy sector and in Mediterranean affairs. Should any agreements be reached in the two areas before Labour is returned to power, the MLP will propose the agreements to the government, in the national interest, Dr Muscat said. The first meetings are due to be held before the end of this year.

It is interesting that the cocky shrimp with the silver-clad wife should say ‘before Labour is returned to power’ rather than the far more sensible, in public relations terms, ‘when and if Labour is returned to power’. Nobody likes a cocky bastard – and that is not a reflection on the circumstances of his birth – and if he is celebrating already with five years to go, he’s going to hang himself rather more quickly than his political enemies can do it. Surely he met Neil Kinnock in Brussels. Perhaps he should have asked him how he ended up there. And poor Kinnock only popped the champagne at the 11th hour.

Muscat’s terremot is going to be long in coming if this is how he plans to behave. With the two Ronnies as deputy leaders and Jason Micallef as secretary-general, he has to be super-careful about how he is perceived. Instead, he carries on mashing things up.

The Labour leader thanked former Prime Minister Dom Mintoff for his ‘continuous interest’ in his visit….. He was accompanied by, among others, MLP international secretary Alex Sceberras Trigona.

Like his predecessor, Muscat seems to believe that prime ministers can use a magic wand to pay for things.

In his press conference Dr Muscat said the MLP will shortly publish its initial technical analysis of the new utility tariffs proposed by the government. He said it was unacceptable that while, across the world, governments were seeking ways to boost the economy, the opposite was happening in Malta. and it was the economy which was supposed to help the government.

If you don’t get people to pay for their own electricity, you have to get other people to pick up the tab. Electricity is not free. It doesn’t take a technical analysis to tell you that if you subsidise electricity for X number of people, you have to get Y number of people to pay more for theirs or tax them to make up the difference.