There's never a dull moment on this piece of rock in the Mediterranean Sea! Three weeks ago, we had the disclosure that a formal complaint to the Commissioner of Police, made by the Malta Labour Party Deputy Leader for Party Affairs against people within the MLP itself, had led to a private citizen being hounded by the law enforcement set-up of the country.
We now have an authentic exposé on the lengths that the MLP propaganda machine is prepared to go in order to hound a minister. For hounding is the name of the game.
I am, of course, referring to the incredible harassment and awful treatment that Minister Censu Galea is being subjected to by the MLP propaganda machine, led - in this case - by none other than MLP leader Alfred Sant himself.
Dr Sant's 'scoop' seems to consist of a number of tapes recording meetings held with Mr Galea at his constituency office in St Paul's Bay - tapes that were secretly recorded for ulterior motives by someone who met the minister a number of times.
Dr Sant is so pleased with this 'scoop' that he even suggested that there was some resemblance with the Watergate scandal that led to President Richard Nixon's resignation in the 1970s. This parallel is, of course, pure fantasy. It was a paranoid Nixon who hired a secret group of people - dubbed 'the plumbers' - to investigate the private lives of his critics and political enemies and who placed a tape recorder in his own office.
According to Dr Sant, the tapes reveal that some six or seven years ago Mr Galea knew that all was not well in the Public Transport Authority (PTA) that fell under his ministerial responsibility and he is being accused of having done nothing about it.
However, the facts show that the then PTA was later disbanded and the Awtorità Dwar it-Trasport (ADT) was set up to replace it in 2002. According to a report in last Sunday's edition of the MLP weekly paper KullHadd, the first ADT chairman appointed in March 2002 had said that he had found a fragmented organisation without an administrative structure.
In itself, this undermines the foremost accusation being levelled at Mr Galea, i.e. that he had done nothing to remedy the situation. To cover up this glaring contradiction, the MLP propaganda machine is now saying that the same people who were employed with the PTA are employed with the ADT.
In one of his forays that are part of a carefully thought-out, planned and organised persecution of Minister Censu Galea, Dr Sant is reported to have said that what matters is what Mr Galea had said and not what other people are recorded as saying in the same tapes. Or - by implication - how the tapes were recorded and by whom and how they ended up in his hands.
This is, of course, unacceptable in a democracy. How this piece of amateur 'entrapment' was carried out and why are two very important questions; the answers reveal a lot on the ethics and principles that the MLP is prepared to forego to score a cheap political point.
According to a report in last Sunday's Maltatoday, Mr Galea himself revealed that the tapes were surreptitiously recorded by an employee of the then PTA at a time when he was facing disciplinary proceedings.
In fact, the employee was eventually charged with insubordination, neglect of duties and discrimination against his subordinates. He was suspended from his job and eventually discharged. Apparently he is now suing in Court to get his job back - having briefed a lawyer who is an Opposition MP to take up his case.
This information alone should have shamed the MLP. I can see no reason why the recordings were made except to embarrass the minister in an effort to 'persuade' him to interfere and halt the disciplinary proceedings. That the minister did nothing of the sort is to his credit.
In fact, when he discovered that he was being taped, the minister, in no uncertain terms, told the person recording him that he will not do anything to undermine the pending disciplinary proceedings. Having been unsuccessful in his ludicrous attempt, the person involved passed on the tapes to the MLP, some six years after they were recorded.
What for? To tarnish the minister's reputation - what else? This smacks off personal vendetta.
The MLP's willing and active participation in this sordid story tells much more about the sorry state of the MLP than about Mr Galea's alleged sins of omission. For the real scandal lies in the MLP's stooping so low in its efforts to depict the government in a bad light.
Does the end justify the means for the MLP? Is not their campaign to expose Minister Galea's sins of omission also abetting the pathetic attempt of one man trying to pursue a personal vendetta against the minister because he lost his job following disciplinary proceedings?
And where does the MLP stand, as the party that wants to form the next government after the next election? Once in government, will it summarily discharge all the personnel in the ADT who had been employed with the PTA that allegedly was a 'web of corruption'?
More importantly, can the MLP leader assure the people of Malta, that once in government, his administration will respect disciplinary decisions and not give back 'his' job - or an even better one - to the person who passed on the tapes to them when in Opposition?
In indirectly taking up the cudgels on behalf of a slighted employee who lost his job for disciplinary reasons, the MLP has made an appalling strategic mistake.
Incredibly, Dr Sant has stirred up a hornet's nest with a self-wrought long-term negative effect so as to score a short-lived political advantage against one of the least controversial ministers in the current Cabinet.
And this man is being sold to the Maltese electorate as a man with a vision!
micfal@maltanet.net