The Prime Minister IS the Establishment, Dr Muscat

I am really tired of hearing the word ‘establishment’, with a small ‘e’, as though they’re talking about a shop, flung about the halls and news portals.

What exactly do people like Muscat think the Establishment is, if it’s not the most influential and well-connected people in a particular society, country, or organisation?

The Prime Minister IS the Establishment. He is the most powerful person in the country and the single most influential decision-maker. Joseph Muscat will cease to be the crux of the Establishment when he is voted out or steps down as Prime Minister, but even then, as Opposition leader – if he stays as party leader – he will remain an important Establishment figure, his role as Opposition leader written into the Constitution.

Up until the end of the 1960s, the Establishment was made up of senior civil servants, bankers, senior military officers, bishops and monsignors, influential merchant families – those were the constants – and the transient political leaders who came and went. In the 1970s and 1980s, the Establishment ceased to exist in any shape or form, because all of Malta’s social and administrative structures were systematically destroyed, and influence and power came only in the form of corrupt political barons.

The Establishment eventually began to come into being again, but devoid of its previously associated connotations of respectability. The Prime Minister is definitely a part of that, but any prime minister would be, as the chief decision-maker in the country.