An ordinary pack of cards contains four suits, hearts, diamonds, clubs and spades. The Labour pack of cards, however, contains yet a fifth suit, which it finds terribly useful when its chips are down at the political poker table.
It is called the victims suit precisely because it contains the victim cards. Not just 13 of them but 27 and upwards.
The king of victims is Joseph Muscat. He is a man who believes in all his friends despite their record levels of greed and alleged corruption. The king, although the holder of an economics degree, in utmost good faith walks and falls blindly into a number of alleged corrupt deals, starting from Café Premier and ending with the huge multi-million Vitals scam.
Educated by Jesuits, he takes nothing from them and, instead, prefers to hold tight onto his adolescent naïveté, which makes him cute, lovable but somewhat over trusting. This usually leads to his downfall and ‘paying the highest price’ for the misdeeds and crimes of other cards in his pack, in which case he becomes entitled to a rent-free office and package that, over time, will cost the country over a million euros.
He is married to the queen of victims. After the fall of the king, she is driven around in a new Range Rover Discovery while bearing a personal suffering that is greater than that of the family of Daphne Caruana Galizia. But she manages just to get by with half a dozen designer handbags.
The jack of victims is, of course, Keith Schembri. He is the poor victim who loses his smartphone the minute it rings to warn him that the police are about to body search him and his Mellieħa villa.
Famous for his alleged shady passport deals and sometimes referred to as the ‘jack of all shades’, he too pays the high price whenever the king falls face down on the table.
They now know that the public is waking up to the slick fake propaganda and their expensive press conferences- Eddie Aquilina
The ace of victims is yet another one who pays a high price for being caught with her pants down. She gets tri-monthly spins on a junior minister’s salary and perks. But the poor thing always falls for some rich guy who lures her away from a life of service to others by drowning her in Bulgari gifts and thousands of euros of tax-free birthday presents.
She is a constant embarrassment to herself and to the country but her prime minister, Robert Abela, the joker in the pack, will always dismiss her detractors as ‘misogynists’ and defend her place at the trough by pointing to the number one game rule of law, namely, that all cards of the victims suit are entitled to a second chance.
After all, the second chance is given to the six of victims, Justyne Caruana, till she then too falls in love and is caught using public funds to feed her new man. She too pays the highest price ending up with two servings of termination pay outs totalling some €54,000 and, of course, a handmade consultancy on top of it all to keep her quiet.
The 10 of victims is the forgotten one. Initials KM. He was once a star card, a winning one, the backbone of the king’s successes. But now no one dares to pick him up lest they are reminded of his alleged past involvement in illegal offshore games.
But, enough of this cheap sarcasm.
In one decade, Labour has waded through nearly five billion euros of national debt using COVID and the Ukraine war as a cover – a cover for a bloated cabinet of “child posers” supported by party boys and girls who “pig themselves” with two or three salaries and ridiculous severance packages.
They are screwing the country for all its worth. They now know that the public is waking up to the slick fake propaganda and their expensive press conferences.
Beware. Their last card is playing the victim.