Here’s something that’s happening almost by stealth even as Robert Abela continues to shield Joseph Muscat and several of his merry men. Abela and at least two ministers are throwing key Muscat policies under a bus.

Take Carmelo Abela, the minister for sustainable development, operating out of the Office of the Prime Minister. He wrote the following in this newspaper almost a month ago, although he could have been anticipating Monday’s Ħamrun tragedy:

“...proper and sustainable planning has never been more important than it is at this moment in time. Knee-jerk reactions to problems we should have seen coming when our economy started growing will do us no good and they will only serve to harm us in the long term.”

Put to one side the self-serving criticism of protestors against speculative rampant development and deregulation. Here’s a senior minister, working side by side with the new prime minister, agreeing that several kinds of problems were foreseeable.

Abela again: “I was pleased to see that the environment and planning were assigned to the same minister under the premiership of Robert Abela, as they go hand in hand.”

He makes it sound so obvious. And it is. But their separation was Muscat’s legacy.

Finally: “We should strive to engage interested parties and take up more initiatives that help us arrive at our goal – that of being future-proof.”

Future-proof would be nice. But secure against the collapse of our houses, and our banks, and our ability to open bank accounts in Europe, and our police force, and our health system... would be a start.

Is that over-stretching Abela’s words? So take a look at the words of Aaron Farrugia, back in December, less than a month away of becoming the new environment and planning minister.

He wrote in this newspaper that Gross Domestic Product, on its own, was an inadequate criterion of success. It does not measure progress or backsliding on climate change, for example, or inequality.

He proposed a new indicator: Gross National Wellbeing. He’s not inventing the wheel. It’s used elsewhere. It has budgets allocated. Indicators are selected and analysed.

Now just look at what he mentions: justice and good governance; environmentally sustainable practices; income for the vulnerable; investment specifically targeting early school-leaving age; sustainable public health; and work-life balance.

You look at each one of those items and see an indictment of Muscat’s legacy. In case you missed it, even our schooling system is now officially under a cloud. Oh, and we now know that all the hoo-hah about waste separation – getting the children worked up, distributing different waste buckets, making us sort things into different bags – was just a gimmick.

There can be no restoration of public trust and security without people being held responsible

We separated the waste. The authorities put it all together again. Not a bad metaphor for how we found out about the misbehaving cronies and they somehow got rewarded again.

But it took the prime minister to put the boot in. Addressing Labour activists on Sunday, Abela spoke of the VGH hospital deal, still capable of producing scandal. Put to one side that the prime minister jumped the gun on what is the subject of a magisterial inquiry (he said some parts of the deal satisfy him and others don’t).

Here’s the more interesting part. Abela insisted that Steward – the company that took over from VGH – has to abide with the agreement it has with the government and fulfil all its obligations. That includes paying the €12 million it owes in back taxes and social security.

The sting: “This is how a government that holds the national interest as its top priority must operate.” Where does that leave the Muscat government’s attitude to the national interest? It let Steward run up the bill and Muscat is even still lobbying on its behalf.

The Abela government’s near-impossible balancing act is how to shield irresponsible (if not crooked) politicians and appointees from answering for their maladministration and corruption while at the same time signalling that a radical policy turn is needed on several fronts.

It’s pretty clear why it has to signal this change and pave the way for it. The Muscat modus operandi really is unsustainable for the country in the short run. There are only so many years of running the country as though it’s an interminable happy hour. At some point, you begin to have blackouts, the behaviour becomes irresponsible, the driving dangerous, and the liver gives up.

Any difficult balancing act by a government is difficult to pull off without public understanding and leeway. But it’s a two-way relation. You cannot reasonably expect the public to give you room for manoeuvre without giving it good reasons to trust you.

Right now, however, the Abela government needs to do more to earn our support. We know it knows it has to clear the rubble that’s a consequence of Muscat’s legacy. Literally, in the case of the Ħamrun tragedy.

But there can be no clearing of the rubble, no restoration of public trust and security, without people being held responsible. That means investigation of anyone under suspicion.

ranierfsadni@europe.com