Why does Muscat want to call an election after four years instead of five?

All the behind-the-scenes signs are there that a general election is imminent, and that it will be held before the summer onslaught.

My own view is that Muscat intended to have a triumphant party conference this past weekend, with accolades and so forth and with his wife taking centre stage as she did before the general election, followed by a big celebratory unveiling of his government’s Azerbaijan corruption power station on the Monday (yesterday) with a big delegation from the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan in attendance.

Then these plans sort of blew up, and he found himself at the epicentre of a storm of scandal instead, an octopus of controversy with far more than eight tentacles, and fighting fires on all fronts.

Nobody noticed the Labour Party general conference, whatever big announcement Muscat might have made at the closing session on Sunday was obliterated by the absolutely massive protest demonstration in Valletta, his wife had to be kept out of sight, and when the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan delegation arrived, it was to a wall of stories of about how Azerbaijani PEPs are using Pilatus Bank to launder money. So they, too, had to hide from the press.

The power station launch yesterday was the dampest of damp squibs – because not only has it been four years in the making, but then it was Panama Konrad who starred beneath the cameras, and right now, after a year of controversy about his money-laundering set-up in Panama/New Zealand/Dubai, it is not exactly his finest hour.

The big question, however, remains, and the oddest thing is that nobody is asking it. Why does Muscat want to call a general election after four years instead of five? Journalists should be asking him – none of them take my calls any longer; they’re too busy trying to obliterate me – why he’s desperate to go to the polls now. What’s bothering him? Where does the problem lie? We should be told. But of course, here in Zimbabwe, we won’t be.