KMB has no power without the backing of Gaddafi.

Daphne,

You’re right. For a very long time, the Labour press ‘ad nauseum’ referred to John Dalli as Hu Bastjan, each and every single time they mentioned him. Now I think it’s alright for Labour to back lil HuBastjan.

Wrong Daphne, not two people but at least three: Franco, JPO and Jesmond.

@Antoine Vella – John Dalli himself thinks that he can distinguish between “John Dalli the EU Commissioner” and “John Dalli, Maltese Citizen”.

Maybe it’s high time the Nationalist Party started vetting its candidates properly before they cause further embarrassment or, worse, drag the country down for their own personal gain.

You cannot even begin to compare John Dalli with Austin Gatt, for heaven’s sake! It would be a bit like comparing Fenech Adami with Mintoff. Poles apart; different backgrounds too.

The PM with regards to the ‘rebellious’ back benchers.

I believe that he will be in for an uncomfortable questioning one he sets foot in Libya.

That is exactly why I said that the prime minister should tell us why it was not considered, to stop the speculation. I never said that it was a good proposition, as we know hardly anything about it.

It is not a nice thing to spend years as a minister and than find yourself practically unemployed. As a matter of fact , Parliament had voted a sum of money which was given to ex-ministers, to help them set up again in, let’s call it, private life.

[Daphne – He doesn’t need to do anything, Silvio. The man is over 60 already. He can finish his term, hoover up his pension, and lie on a beach. His problem isn’t that he wants something to do. His problem is that he wants to run things and be relevant.]

Last thing that the prime minister should clarify is whether John Dalli presented this proposal before or after he was made EU commisssioner

You are perfectly right, Joe Saliba was never a minister, but the party sec.gen. and the prime minister are the MINISTER MAKERS.

[Daphne – Actually not – the party secretary-general has no say in who gets to be in the cabinet. There is separation between party and government.]

One should never underestimate the importance and power of a party secretary, and who knows, he might use his position to build up his future contacts for a rainy day.I see nothing wrong in that.

[Daphne – Apparently, the position is not important or powerful at all, so much so that Labour doesn’t even have a secretary-general.]

John Dalli is guilty of ‘indhil barrani’. Let’s call KMB.

‘I am of the opinion that John Dalli would be an asset to the government.’

Silvio, I can understand Labour Party officials cosying up to John Dalli but I sincerely cannot understand this sudden admiration by Labour Party supporters for John Dalli.

I distinctly remember that when he was the Minister of Finance he was often referred to as Johnny Cash and was often hit by corruption claims on the Labour media. He was the ‘Austin Gatt’ of the day, so to speak.

[Daphne – He was, in fact, known by the Labour press as HuBastjan.]

The Nationalist Party had also cosied up to such people as Joe Grima but Nationalist supporters never forgot who these people were and did not suddenly start to admire them.