1987-1992: Eddie Fenech Adami governed with a single-seat majority

Muscat freaked out all over Mqabba yesterday afternoon, saying that we have to vote for him and a strong government because a Nationalist government with a single-seat majority will be “unstable” and unable to make changes in the country and guarantee economic stability and jobs.

I won’t make any excuses for my choice of language, but what total bollocks, really. Between 1987 and 1992, Eddie Fenech Adami governed with just one seat more than Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici’s Labour Opposition. That was the most difficult time ever for the Nationalist Party in government, when the greatest changes had to be made in a situation of economic disaster, and with the country’s institutions reduced to rubble if they existed at all.

For the first two of those years, the Labour mob still believed it owned the country, and carried on shooting, ransacking the Courts of Justice, towing an aircraft carrier across the mouth of Grand Harbour to block it, and causing untold trouble generally involving convoys of dockyard workers on lorries.

But the changes were made even in the face of all that difficulty, and Malta and its economy were wrested towards normality, the rule of law and respect for human rights.

Yes, with a single-seat majority and an Opposition led by a crackpot with a mob behind him.

Compare and contrast with Joseph Muscat, who despite having a nine-seat majority in the House couldn’t govern to the end of his full five years and has called a general election almost a year before the due date.

And here he is now, talking about stable and unstable governments: the man who couldn’t cut it even with nine more seats in the House than the Opposition had, the man who couldn’t last the full five years even with a 36,000-vote majority.