Muscat won’t be linked to failure – dispatches ministers to face the music instead

It was the Prime Minister and Labour Party leader who should have faced the press this morning and given his party’s/government’s first reaction to the Constitutional Court ruling on parliamentary seats.

But those in the media and politics who have watched Muscat closely noticed long ago that he is ultra-careful never to be associated visually or aurally with failure. If his party or government has even the most minor success or achievement, he rushes to front it himself, like the announcement that 300 Russians will be studying in Malta, which is the sort of thing that a prime minister should never announce himself.

He even portrays as government achievements things which are entirely connected with the private sector, like Crane Currency’s decision to set up in Malta, which he announced alongside Keith Schembri. But then when Actavis, the pharmaceutical manufacturer, said that it will lay off 200 people, he sent out Chris Cardona and Evarist Bartolo to face the press.

This morning, after the Constitutional Court ruling, the Prime Minister was nowhere to be seen (failure! can’t be associated with it) and the government’s reaction was given to the media by, of all people, the Tourism Minister and, more inappropriately still, the Justice Minister, who found himself commenting unfavourably on a Constitutional Court ruling.

Also, and I hate to have to be the one to point this out, but this is strictly speaking not a government matter but a Labour Party matter, and we don’t need yet another reminder that the Labour Party has never known that there is a distinction, why and what it means.

It should have been the Labour Party which addressed the media and spoke first, and not the government. The government is fortunate in this respect because it’s party deputy leader for parliamentary affairs is also the deputy prime minister, but probably nobody has wound up Louis Grech’s clockwork key yet this morning or put in his batteries.