Comment of the day
Posted by The Other Hatter, this afternoon:
What puzzles me, watching the Malta story unfold from afar, is why the PM and his team have held back on broadcasting this very point: that the public don’t want – and they definitely don’t need – the uncertainty and instability of an early election when Europe is in the middle of its worst financial crisis ever.
While Franco Debono, Joseph Muscat and their respective acolytes have been busy playing silly buggers, governments, businesses and financial institutions around the world have been preparing contingency plans for a complete collapse of the Eurozone.
Debono is quite simply mad, but Muscat’s behaviour is reckless and reprehensible.
Muscat is also too stupid to realize that if he had poured some cold water on his party’s urge to overthrow the government at this untimely moment, and rallied alongside the PM as he battled the economic storms that rage all around Malta, he would have come across as a reasonable, sensible patriot, with an understanding of the gravity of the current situation.
Had he just done that much, he might have stood a chance of positioning his party as a credible, viable alternative. Instead he has made it devastatingly apparent that he has yet to put aside childish things.
But then, I suppose, what should one expect from the man who considered it wise to establish himself as Dom Mintoff’s natural-born successor and number one hagiographer?
The nonsense that Malta’s parliament has been living through these past few months is crystal clear evidence that what the PM needs for his next term in office is a clear, absolute majority, with a margin of more than one seat.
The balance of power for the entire country cannot ever again rest in the hands of a lunatic like Debono, or the sole representative of a fringe party like the AD.
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Get this man a cigar.
I pity Joey, really.
His party’s guru is reported this afternoon as saying that Malta’s second quarter dip is a result of high government spending and increased national debt.
Utter economic rubbish.
Joey is only a petty journalist. If his so-called dino-geniuses provide him with advice that is trash, no wonder he is completely lost.
Then what according to you is it due too?
Why don’t we blame it on Franco, or isn’t he the target any longer?
I think the real reason is, and here I have for the first time to agree with Tonio Fenech, that we have too many Maltese Cwiec running the country.
If this is not calling the pot black, I don’t know what is.
Keep it up Tonio, you are really helping the P.L.
In a few words.
The real reason is that the eurozone has lost its competitive edge.
For a million and one reasons.
Franco, Tonio Fenech, GonziPN and all the Maltese cwiec running the country (including Joey and il-Wink) do not have a finger in this pie.
This pie was made and baked in Brussels.
Of course the eurozone has lost its competitive edge, but these things don’t just simply happen. They are usualy the results of bad managment and greed by banks.
The thing that worries me is the fact that up to last week, according to the government, our country was running on RUBINI, so what really happened? Were they lying to us?
Or were ‘Joey and il-wink’ foreseeing what our Maltese Cwiec were trying to hide?
[Daphne – Silvio, Labour were actually agitating for more of what put us into statistical recession in the first place: absorption of oil costs by Enemalta. And if you think Labour can do something about ST Microelectronics’s fall-off in exports, good luck to you.]
The more time they take to admit that we are in shit, the more time it will take to try and remidy the situation.
Lastly, did we join the E.U. to have our pies baked in Brussels?
This sounds like something that I would have expected to hear comming from KMB.
No one ever said the country was running on rubini. The PM has been accused of political dishonesty following the 40 million Euro budget cut.
Labour’s dishonesty is when it implies it can rectify forces beyond our control. And on a quick glance at the sectors in question, it’s quite clear the Franco Debono saga, kicked off in November, could also have contributed to a slowdown. As did all the squaking of a snap election, Maltastar’s had it on their pages for the past 6 months now.
Joseph Muscat is not a journalist. Maltastar is not a credible news medium. It is the natural successor to the Weekend Chronicle, another supposed Trojan horse that was supposed to persuade tal-pepe that Labour is credible.
The notion that this “new” Labour Party could actually be improving its chances at the next general election if it started to behave as a loyal opposition in a Malta passing through an international economic crisis is completely beyond the mental grasp of the LP diehards infesting the local blogs. It is also beyond the comprehension of an LP that stuffs its adminstration by the unrepentant dinosaurs from the Mintoff-KMB era of terror, (a.k.a. their golden era)
Joseph cannot afford a regular electoral campaign, he’s too busy watching his back. That rules out any discretion in the role of the opposition.
He cannot rally alongside the PM either, it would isolate him further from the PL, being a relative newcomer with a vague idea of how the ex-MLP works. His ‘terremot’ nothing but a weak tremor inside Mile End. As if that matters.
And when someone like Jose’ Herrera, who stepped aside, or so they would have it, for party leadership, starts questioning the leader’s judgement and wisdom, it becomes difficult to concentrate on such mundane matters.
People like Jose’, and there are others, can afford, will benefit, from another Labour defeat.
Why else would his PL find itself at a loss to tackle politics in a comprehensive manner? The plain truth is that he just doesn’t have anyone working with him. He may be in parliament, still, he’s unelected, relatively untested and with a sporadic, pastiched identity.
Call that leadership.
Please let me have your e-mail address.
[Daphne – dcg@proximuspr.com]
Good point all round, except for one simple fact. Mr Muscat and his motley crew are under the impression that they don’t need to be reasonable because it’s not like ‘their’ normal voters would recognise statesmanship if it bit them on the elbow.
They are pandering to the lowest common denominator without appreciating that by raising their standards a little, they would raise the nation’s.
But that would also be ‘too much work’ and it is wajz to do less if you can get away with it, right?
Yes, and that is precisely the problem with this cynical, easy way out calculation: it’s not the PL’s “normal voters” that Joey and his motley crew need to convince. It’s the fence-sitters, in whose hands your next election rests.
You’ll just have to hope that there are more fence-sitters who actually think before casting a vote, than fence-sitters who are motivated by hdura and lanzit. Joey is betting on the opposite.