This is not a government that is entirely sure of itself. Consider how they reacted to the pressure of migratory arrivals, a situation that Malta has faced every spring for over 20 years. You would think they had a plan for the situation. You would think they would have had a reading of the law, some technical advice on how to manage the situation, diplomatic engagement with Libya, the UN and the European Commission.
I will not buy the excuse that Robert Abela is new and inexperienced. He sat in cabinet for years as his predecessor’s guest. And his ministerial team is composed of veterans of seven years of public administration. And he’s not running a band club. He has a professional army at his disposal, a diplomatic service and all the trappings of state.
But whom did he call when he heard the first noise of a spluttering onboard motor 100 miles out at sea? Neville Gafà, the crook that publicly annoyed him by showing up at his swearing-in as prime minister and whom he had thrown out of government the next day.
At best, that move was pathologically stupid. They got an obvious troublemaker to get them out of trouble. What could go wrong?
We all wanted to hope our country was no longer a Mafia state and even for us who denounced the symptoms in the past it is difficult to accept the sickness has not gone.
We all prefer a boss who does not think they know it all. We don’t expect our prime ministers to be experts in everything.
We prefer to watch them consult doctors on medical issues and lawyers on legal issues and planners on development issues.
We expect to see our prime minister consult economists on what we can do about kick-starting the economy after the disaster we are bound to face truly hits us.
What we don’t expect is for the prime minister to consult the 2019 Man of the Year for Corruption voted in that position by the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP).
We do not expect Joseph Muscat who resigned in disgrace less than five months ago to be brought in to run our economy.
This does not show that Abela has even a smidgen of confidence in his own central programme.
The theme of his New Year 2020 Urbi et Orbi was a commitment to refresh the image the world has of Malta.
It seems clear that Robert Abela does not trust his own ability to deliver to the economic aspirations of the country
When he said that we hoped he’d work to show the world that criminals in Malta get what they deserve. And that he’d show the world that this is not a pirate island where our economic well-being relies on washing money for criminals.
Possibly the worst method of projecting an image of renewal after the Muscat era is exhuming his political corpse and get his cadaver to plan our economy.
I find it disturbing how quickly this country was found prepared to pretend none of what forced Muscat to resign ever happened at all.
Press reports are accepting the existence of ‘The office of Dr Joseph Muscat’ as if this was a real thing, like the modest apartment the Pope Emeritus has kept across the back garden of the Vatican.
It is amazing how quickly we were prepared to get the opinion about the running of our economy from a man who just five months ago was ignored by the rest of the world as a political dead man walking in office.
The sight of newspapers hanging on to Muscat’s words like anything he said could ever matter was particularly unseemly.
It betrayed a sense of collective original sin. It reminded me of all the years we closed one eye to Muscat’s mindless corruption because we assumed that was a small price to pay for all the money sloshing around.
It seems now there’s a collective nostalgia for a time when it was okay to have a corrupt government and that a journalist who denounced them could be swept away. The fear of an economic downturn is bringing out of us the same ethical ambiguity that the thrill of an economic upturn did. Whether we’re drunk with money or starving for it, what we want is more money. And Muscat to pour it over us.
It seems clear that Abela does not trust his own ability to deliver to the economic aspirations of the country.
The combination of a world economic shrinkage and the cleaning up of our own brand of money-making is proving to be an undesirable prospect for him.
He can’t do anything about the worldwide shrinkage. But he can throw the clean-up act for Malta’s economy out the window.
Back in come greed and corruption, unrestrained over-development, luxury booths for tax dodgers and a laundromat for all sorts of unsavoury characters. Who better than Muscat to fix that for us?
In that context, Gafà makes perfect sense. If we can sign up tyrants to launder the money they embezzle from their own countries here, we can sign up other tyrants to rid us of the migration problem and scrub the blood and the guts from their own floor, rather than ours.
Last week we made the headlines abroad again.
Jaws dropped as a lawyer who worked for our prosecutor’s office at 5pm on Wednesday, went to court on Thursday at 9am to represent Yorgen Fenech.
Fenech was the buddy of the prime minister, of his chief of staff and of the head of the criminal investigations department at the police among others.
He owned a secret company that was to pay enormous bribes to his buddy the chief of staff and the minister for energy who gave Fenech the contract for an energy monopoly.
The prosecutor’s office where that lawyer worked is charging Fenech with murdering the journalist who uncovered these rotten relationships.
It had not been said for a while but watching that lawyer switch sides, shuffle his loyalties, get it both ways, the world said ‘ah, it’s still a Mafia state then’.
They never had time to think ‘The office of Dr Joseph Muscat’ could ever be anywhere but the Auberge de Castille.