Malta is now in a far worse mess than it was a few months ago: two crooked people at the helm

Those who are calling for unity behind Adrian Delia have made one of two judgement calls. They have decided he is not crooked and sleazy, or they have decided that his crookedness and sleaze don’t matter.

There is no third (or new) way about it.

I shall now have to revise my opinion of several people, in elected politics or outside it: they are either naïve and oblivious to what is glaringly obvious, which makes them even more dim-witted than I thought possible, or they are amoral and nihilistic and prepared to tolerate and back anything to achieve their personal objectives.

Marlene Farrugia is right. This is not about party politics. This is about dishonest politics. It’s about the need for decency. The decent have been left with nowhere to turn.

If you are asking me to rally behind a crook, my answer is an emphatic “No.” A crook remains a crook whether he is wearing the Nationalist Party emblem or the Labour flag. I would no more rally behind Adrian Delia than I would have rallied behind John Dalli had he become party leader in that contest with Lawrence Gonzi.

And that is quite apart from the fact that proper journalists should rally blindly behind nobody.