Quack, quack! It's that decoy duck again.
I'm wearing a red ribbon to fool you into thinking that I'm not working for the Nationalist Party.
Joseph Muscat was out on the hustings again this morning, ignoring my advice on getting his timing right.
Never one to miss a trick, but invariably the sort not to think it through, he took a cue from Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando’s interview in The Sunday Times today. The Mistra case might have been leaked by people in the Nationalist Party as a decoy to deviate the people’s attention from other matters, Muscat told his Sunday morning audience.
Well, blow me down.
Is that quacking I hear from one very large decoy duck?
If there is anyone who is perfectly placed to know who leaked that document, it is Joseph Muscat. I’m sorry, but isn’t it obvious why? The document was leaked to the Labour Party, and he is the Labour Party’s leader. If nobody in the party has bothered to tell him who leaked it, because he was just an ordinary MEP at the time, then all he has to do is knock a few heads together and find out. Or he can give Alfred Sant a call and ask him who gave him that document. Somebody did – he didn’t find it in the street.
When Joseph Muscat speculates in public, as he did this morning, about who might or might not have leaked that document, he is either lying or revealing that he is not in control of his party because crucial information like this is being kept from him by Alfred Sant and possibly others. Sant knows who leaked the information because he was the person to whom it was leaked. If he is refusing to share this information with Joseph Muscat, the situation lends itself to some interpretation.
It’s interesting to see that Muscat, like Sant, plays Chinese whispers with the facts. Pullicino Orlando said in his interview that he suspects somebody in the Nationalist Party might have leaked that document to cause him harm – personally, that is. He did not say that the party itself leaked the document to Labour to distract attention from more pressing matters.
Joseph Muscat’s interpretation is more than a little cracked. Nobody in their right mind can picture a scenario in which the Nationalist Party, in the last few days of a desperately-fought general election, leaks hugely damaging information with the potential to sink its own ship to its very enemy.
I don’t think Pullicino Orlando’s assessment of the situation is right. But it is entirely possible, unlike Muscat’s crackpot conspiracy theory, which is rendered all the more risible because he has the truth at the end of a phone-line to Alfred Sant, but clearly Sant is not playing ball with him.
Our electoral system pits candidates of the same party against each other, so that they are fighting bloody battles within their own ranks as well as going to war with the enemy outside. It is realistic that a candidate might seek to undermine or undo a rival for the same seat, even if he or she is of the same party.
When Joseph Muscat finally succeeds in persuading block-headed Alfred Sant to tell him who leaked the document, perhaps he would do the decent thing, pick up the phone and pass the information on to Pullicino Orlando.
Until then, a little less quacking from decoy ducks would be advisable.
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When I read about this umpteenth Muscat blunder, I thought probably The Times has an axe to grind about the Black Monday apology and is trying its best to ridicule him with its reporting. But when my early-morning espresso mate today was all het up about this Agatha Christie theory, I just couldn’t stop thinking that we are going to be in serious trouble when he becomes prime minister. For the record, this person is a senior MLP member who still cannot get over Muscat’s election as leader.
“The Mistra case might have been leaked by people in the Nationalist Party as a decoy to deviate the people’s attention from other matters, Muscat told his Sunday morning audience.”
And Alfred Sant fell for the ‘bait’ and lost the general election. Is that what Joseph Muscat is really trying to tell us?
Whatever you write and however you try to twist and turn the essence of JPO’s interview, you can never hide the huge cracks in Gonzi Pn that are appearing more and more each day.
One day the Pn will regret deeply to have stole the 2008 election. Similarly to what happened to the MlP in 1981… Both constitutionally correct but morally wrong….
[Daphne – How do you steal an election, Alan? Do you crack the code on the safe, pile it into a sack marked SWAG and leave through an open window wearing a striped top and mask, or the contemporary equivalent of a balaclava and a Kalashnikov?]
Pullicino Orlando should have the right to a permit at Mistra. Adjacent to his land there are two full developments which were blessed by the planning authority, and proposed by the present MEPA auditor.
Pullicino Orlando had a direct interest in the project which ran into hundreds of thousands of euros. He did not put all his cards on the table when disclosing information to the prime minister. He handed the contract to him when asked to do so.
Even though the court’s judgment was in favour of MEPA public officers, it remains unacceptable that they held private meetings with Pullicino Orlando.
The AG should file an appeal on this dubious judgment. If Pullicino Orlando was satisfied with the judgment, he should know that people like me are not.
Sant wanted us to vote for him not because he was good but because Pullicino Orlando was percieved as doing something wrong. Sant was afraid of Pullicino Orlando at the television studios because his own MPs were doing worse things in respect of environmental issues.
Pullicino Orlando got all those votes because the Party did not, and could not, condemn his actions at the eleventh hour. When he entered the Mosta tent and cried he was not given a seat near the party leader, Carmelo Mifsud Bonnici and Tonio Borg. If the party knew about the goings-on of the Mistra case he would have been asked to come clean before contesting the elections under the party ticket. Dr Scerri’s behaviour on this matter was a shining example.
Joe Saliba and his team succeeded in transforming this pain in the ass into a weapon against Dr Sant.
If Joseph Muscat had some grey matter he wouldn’t have spoken out in public about the electoral strategic tactics of the PN. If this decoy business were true than it goes without saying that the PN strategists would not use it again: the adversaries know about it.
If Dr Muscat kept his mouth shut about his suspicions about this strategy he would have turned it against the PN in his favour come next election. He seems to want to prove to us how smart he is.
Bottom line being, as always, “It’s their fault we lost the election.”
It’s true that Muscat’s decoy comment is pointless, but it’s worrying that this issue is being uselessly brought up again and over-analysed for nothing. The court has decided the matter, so that should be it.
I think that maybe Muscat meant to say (another case of expressing himself badly?) that this issue is distracting him from concentrating on the issues that are currently more important to the country.
The question the Maltese should want answered is “Why are such scandals so often the hot topic these days?”
a) Is it just perception?
b) Is it because of better enforcement (to the expense of other crimes is seems)?
c) Is there is more of it because of poor governance especially in state departments?
d) Is there more of it because the circle is getting bigger and bigger?
e) Is it just politicians throwing mud at each other, and nothing else?
Malta needs a healthy and more progressive opposition, at least in time for the next general election. A political party and its leader evolve and hopefully starting the campaign so very early gives Muscat enough time to practice, perhaps.
Alfred Sant still rues the day he ‘resigned’. This is all a subtle ploy to see Sant back as leader of the Labour Party. Joseph Muscat is just a decoy until Sant reports back.
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20080615/local/muscat-hints-help-pn-prepare-for-jpo-attack
“Indirect hints given by Joseph Muscat during the election campaign enabled the Nationalist Party to deduce that the MLP was about to launch an attack on Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando, PN general secretary Joe Saliba tells The Sunday Times in an interview published today.
Dr Muscat never actually mentioned Dr Pullicino Orlando, but comments he made at different activities were enough for the PN to send Dr Pullicino Orlando to Dr Sant’s activities as the attack was about to be launched.
In an interview with Herman Grech, Mr Saliba explains that his own actions and comments during the Mistra controversy were not contradictory to what the Prime Minister said. His role as party general secretary was for the PN to win as many votes as possible. In contrast the Prime Minister’s priority was the country, not the party, he says.
Mr Saliba, who is to step down in the coming weeks after nine years at the post, says the PN has as much chance of winning the next general election as the MLP. It would be wrong for his successor to let Labour take a walk over, or take matters for granted, he says. The full text of the interview can be seen in The Sunday Times. Extracts in Maltese can be seen on video above.”
[Daphne – Thank you for reminding me that it was blabbermouth Muscat who gave the game away. Incredibly, I’d forgotten that the reason the Nationalist Party picked it up was because he blabbed so much, unable to resist dropping hints about how much he knows, like a big kid.]
some more quacking.
http://maltastar.com/pages/ms09dart.asp?a=5210
Just when you think they’ve reached the pits of absurdity and couldn’t possibly dig further….
@H.P. Baxxter: you don’t understand what progressive means. You must be out of touch.
Now Joseph will introduce sexual orientation scanning for all Labour Party members and put all the non-heterosexuals in the LBGT section, which will come to be known informally in the party as its Sezzjoni tal-Pufti. It will be welcomed with a long round of applause at the next macho-dominated general conference.
I bet my bottom cent that the only reason why this section is being set up is because funds would be forthcoming from the International Lesbian and Gay Association.
[Daphne – As if. The real reason is that he doesn’t think of homosexuals as people like everyone else, but as UFGs or up-for-grabs voters.]
@Gahan: That “sezzjoni tal-pufti” quip made my day.
Is that a golden horse in the background? God save us…