They shouldn’t be saying what they would do in Konrad Mizzi’s place

I am not at all impressed by the statements that Evarist Bartolo (Minister of Education), Godfrey Farrugia (Labour whip) and Alfred Sant (former Labour prime minister and current MEP) have made, that in Konrad Mizzi’s place they would have resigned/that they think he should resign.

To my mind it is not a coincidence that they have all focused on what they think Mizzi should do, rather than on what they think the Prime Minister should do. They are behaving as though leadership is a matter of waiting for somebody to do something so that you don’t have to take the decision yourself.

Few of us out here are in politics ourselves, yet in every conversation I have had and in every comment I have read the chorus is the same: why does the Prime Minister not sack him?

Alfred Sant’s comment – on Facebook, of all places – is particularly ridiculous in its focus on what Mizzi should do because he himself was Malta’s prime minister at one point so what he should be telling us (and what the press should point out to him, but fails to do so) is that he should be telling us what HE WOULD HAVE DONE IN JOSEPH MUSCAT’S PLACE.

Alfred Sant was a prime minister responsible for a cabinet of ministers. He had a chief of staff, called a head of secretariat back then. What would he have done if faced with these revelations, when he was prime minister?

That’s what the press should be asking him to say, instead of letting him get away with that stupid Facebook remark that was designed to protect Joseph Muscat in the face of accusations of lack of leadership, just like Godfrey Farrugia’s remarks and those of Evarist Bartolo in the same vein.