How blind can a person be? Exactly how stupid can a person be to lack so much self awareness that they completely miss the meaning of the consequences of their own actions.

When Muscat yelled “push back” so emphatically and unequivocally at the top of his voice, planes and army at the ready, the EU scrambled to put a stop to it.

Why wouldn’t it? After all, one of the things the EU prides itself on is its protection of human rights. It’s what those in Ukraine hope for by becoming closer to Europe and further from Russia. That is its reputation world wide, along with caring for the environment and many other things.

So with one of its members ordering a push back so brazenly, claiming that Malta is some weak and helpless chick unable to defend itself from this big bad wolf called immigration and must therefore resort to such extreme measures, they sure did smell the coffee: there is someone in Europe who doesn’t understand human rights.

Then Muscat says that he was only threatening and wasn’t going to actually do it but just wanted to get people’s attention. He also claimed he had some sort of British humour which was not at all British (he isn’t anyway) and actually extremely offensive. In other words a bully’s reply.

Today we see Italy being the bigger man, as it were, and taking on more immigrants to help out because they know that should Muscat be responsible for them they might suffer a fate worse the death.

We also see that Muscat is trying to appeal to the racist vote ( yes, there is such a thing in Malta) by repealing the anti push back laws and now making statements like this.

The most recent was his claim that he thought there was always a consensus among parties in Malta regarding immigration. Clearly he’s been completely off message for the past year and a bit.

No Muscat the EU is not putting immigration as a priority for the first time, and it certainly isn’t taking more steps because of some sort of coffee you served.

They are doing it because they have now had the pleasure of experiencing what a Labour leader in Malta is like. Sure they already know about Mintoff and KMB, Lorry Sant and Alfred Sant too. But rest assured that each and every leader in Europe has an opinion of you which has been formed by your push back antics last Summer, your keenness to appeal to the racists and xenophobes in Malta along with the ignorant and the down right cold hearted, and your isolationist view which is coupled by your tendency to go crying to the EU to fix things that are your responsibility to fix.

They are putting immigration issues higher on the agenda because they are afraid of what those poor people will have to endure should they ever be under your responsibility, because they don’t trust you at all.

Wake up and smell the coffee, labour! Bunch of divs the lot of you.

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HtXOwr4I7uA

Jean-Claude Juncker, the President-designate of the European Commission, has openly stated that when things get difficult a politician should lie. With Joseph Muscat, Prime Minister of Malta, there is no need for things to get difficult to justify his lies. For him, truth is not the norm, but something to use sometimes.
Heads of Government in the European Union (less two), and the majority of the Maltese electorate, seem to consider untruth as an asset in a politician.
We are sleep-walking into chaos.

Technically, Muscat did not lie there.

Muscat did not sell Enemalta to the private sector. He sold it to the public sector. The Chinese public sector.

But he did not do so before he had sold off Enemalta’s electricity generation capability to the public sector. Again, to the Chinese public sector.

It turned out, however, that it was not that way at all – because, as it turned out, responsibility sharing had been on the agenda regularly during the last ten years.

No points scored, at all. However, muscat still attempted to appear as the ‘champion’ during last week”s EU summit.

In Maltese we have a quite uncouth (not to say utterly rude) expression for such occasions when we compare his ‘achievement’ to a man’s producing unpleasant ‘noises’ while using another’s ‘equipment’.

Nahseb li ftehmna.

What worries me is that quite a few of them believe the contrary (that he is a liar), but that does not worry them because they themselves, deep down, are liars. They will not admit that politics has taken a bad turn, ethically and economically because, as you say it would upset their psyche.

Some of them will argue that as long as it’s in Malta’s (meaning their own) interest there’s nothing wrong with lying, sometimes. They even think he’s smart in doing so. This is of course myopic and unprincipled thinking, but unfortunately thus is the village mentality of an uncultured people reared on nepotism.

So, don’t bet on 2018. If recent history is anything to go by, the voting difference between the 1981 (with its constitutional impasse and blatant violence) and 1987 elections was quite slim.

Which, to me, proves that it takes much more than widening access to educational opportunities to change a people’s ingrained (un)cultural attitudes.

Many are not worried about a lying Prime Minister. These many who would not be worried about the worst lying politician in Maltese history would only be worried if:

They cannot hunt,
They cannot build indiscriminately
They cannot get there illegal building sanctioned
They cannot get what they had been promised
They cannot get government jobs
They cannot eat with more than one mouth
They cannot jump the queue at the pharmacy of one’s choice
etc etc

That is what worries them. That your children will not have a good and proper environment and economic situation when they grow up is your problem, not theirs.

He said it on Bondi+, not Xarabank. Gonzi’s response to the same question – the programme was based on a series of questions put to both main party leaders – was that you should always tell the truth.

Half are believing him? I think you mean MORE than half.