How very predictable. And tedious.
When I saw this photograph of Prime Minister Joseph Muscat and former EU Commissioner and 2003 PN government foreign minister Joe Borg, both nearly bursting with self-satisfied pleasure as the Maltese flag was whipped off a plaque at Agribank (in breach of protocol), I thought to myself: “I wonder what that bitchy chap has been promised.”
Little did any of us know that – as revealed in The Sunday Times this morning – just days after Labour got into power, Louis Grech rang Borg and asked him whether he wished to head Malta’s 2017 EU presidency.
Talk about cheap and transparent. It-tnejn jaqaw baxx: Louis Grech actively participating in his government’s creepily systematic targeting of any prominent ‘disgruntled Nationalist’ who made Lawrence Gonzi’s life hell and bitched the Gonzi government until it was brought down. And Joe Borg, who must have purposely waited until Gonzi was voted out to have his bank – which has been open for some time – declared officially opened by Muscat, basking as his ego is stroked.
The last time Joe Borg was heavily featured in the press, it was when he gave a big interview to The Sunday Times, letting rip because PM Gonzi didn’t nominate him for a second term as EU Commissioner. Gonzi’s actual choice, Dalli, was lousy and a recipe for disaster at the outset, but it didn’t follow that Borg had a divine right to be renominated once his term was up.
That’s where all the bitching began.
Unfortunately, Joe Borg’s and Labour’s plan has been thwarted by the fact that in the interim, Joe Borg has decided he is no longer a disgruntled Nationalist. And so he has accepted a position – which was patently offered to him in the spirit of feeding one’s potential enemies to stop them eating you – on the Nationalist Party’s new selection board for candidates.
This has taken the Labour government by surprise, we are told. Oh indeed. Presumably they all need to look up, in their naive and gullible innocence, the definitions of ‘opportunist’ and ‘gentleman’ in their moth-eaten dictionaries.
Their sociopathic understanding of human frailty is also letting them down somewhat. No sensible person would take on board an individual who has demonstrated already how savagely he will round on somebody who does not give him what he wants, if things do not go his way. If Joe Borg was quite happy to do that to Gonzi, he will have no compunction about doing it to Muscat. Or to Simon Busuttil for that matter.
Maybe I just look at things differently, but I would never have dated a man who beat up his previous girlfriend, though I know plenty of women who always think that such a man will be different with them because they are special and the circumstances are different. Yes, right.
In any case, government sources have now told The Sunday Times that they are no longer so crazy about the idea of having Borg head the EU presidency because he sits on that Nationalist Party board.
Apparently, they only want him if he is disgruntled, or a total turncoat like those two squalid specimens, Franco Debono and Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando.
They don’t want him if he is a Nationalist.
And other sources have told The Sunday Times that “Dr Borg made it clear he did not want to be used as a political pawn to undermine the Nationalist Party.”
Strange, that. He seemed unbothered about undermining the Nationalist Party when it was led by Lawrence Gonzi. At least, that was the perception, and it’s precisely why Louis Grech rang him days after the election result and offered him the job, and is now getting cold feet about it because Borg is no longer ‘disgruntled’.
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But you ought to know by now that many Maltese would sell their mothers for a dime.
Given that the appointments so far of ex-PN/current PN traitors are all disgruntled nationalists who did not get what they want (Frank Portelli, Michael Falzon, Martin Fenech, John Dalli, etc), how should one classify Lou Bondi?
A ‘crafty simpleton in search of headlines’ perhaps?
That appointment was the pre-emptive castration of an uncomfortable source of opposition.
How should one classify Lou? . . . Italian supporter, Gozitan, liker of Led Zeppelin (the signs were all there) and ultimately, turncoat.
Daphne, maybe I am missing something but I do not agree with you on this.
Joe Borg was wrong to expect to be reappointed Commissioner and he was also wrong when he made public his disappointment.
But he cannot in any way be compared to JPO, Franco Debono or John Dalli.
The betrayal of these three opportunists was disgusting and shameful. They criticised Gonzi and the PN systematically and repeatedly with the single purpose of getting something back from the PL. They did eventually get their thirty pieces of silver.
That was not the case with Joe Borg. I do not think he set out to undermine the PN, at least certainly not in a systematic way. His only mistake was the interview.
[Daphne – We have no way of knowing what he said and did in private. But my experience of people in general tells me that whatever they are prepared to do in public is just a tiny fraction of what they are prepared to do in private – or rather, amongst groups of people rather than in the media. No, I do not compare him to JPO, Franco and Dalli. But there is clearly a personality problem there all the same, and it will snap out and bite somebody within the next few years. Personality traits become more pronounced in men, not less so, with age.]