Of course Muscat didn’t think Abela would be rejected

Published: March 16, 2016 at 11:34am

There are lots of people out there right now commenting that Muscat’s was a cynical move in nominating Toni Abela for the European Court of Auditors, because he knew that he would be rejected and yet he still used this method of getting him out of the way to replace him with Konrad Mizzi.

No, I don’t think so. That he did it to clear out Abela and bring in his corrupt henchman Konrad Mizzi is beyond dispute. That it was a cynical ploy, using high European public office irresponsibly for his own personal and narrow political ends is beyond question too.

But Muscat fully expected Abela to be accepted and that the case would be closed for him. He thought it was all sewn up neatly, and he never imagined that Abela would boomerang back at him in the shape of a massive problem to be solved on top of all the other problems he has created for himself, for the government, for the Labour Party and for Malta.

Muscat has been used to sewing things up neatly and getting his way all his life. But now he is playing on the European stage and things are a little different there. He has got away with murder – perhaps not actual murder, but certainly cocaine dealing in a Labour Party club – and hoodwinking stupid and amoral people with a scant understanding of democracy and the separation of powers, back home in Malta, and he thinks that all of this is entirely normal.

But it isn’t normal. No, it isn’t normal to dispatch somebody with so much dreadful baggage, and on top of that clearly inept, for a position at the European Court of Auditors. People in Malta accept everything and let Muscat get away with everything because Malta remains, at root, an isolated and remote island society of uneducated people who don’t know jack about even the basics of normal life, and where public life is dominated by a series of men who are clearly in need of a psychiatrist yet who are treated, again, as perfectly normal.

You should see what Malta and Maltese public life look like to people sitting on the outside and looking in (even if they are actually living here). It is beyond freaky and literally chocker with freaks, weirdos and crooks.

TONI ABELA REJECTION 5