Jason Micallef syndrome

By now, it seems clear that the entire country spent the past week pissing itself laughing over Malta National Park head Jason Micallef’s puerile efforts to explain his decision to cover a part of Ta’ Qali with gravel.

Besides the environmental consequences of the inadequate management of a large park in a dry, arid country, the public’s visceral response to Micallef’s efforts also amounts to a stunning rebuke of mediocrity.

It’s not just about Micallef’s lack of relevant expertise in park management: it’s also about the hysterical way in which he works his way backwards from the conclusion that he could not have possibly done anything wrong, confident in the assumption that all his critics will be eating their words when the next rainfall comes.

Indeed, Micallef serves as the perfect example of how cronyism within the Labour Party will always ensure that loyalists somehow always fall upward, even when their ineptitude is evident. If you need any additional reminders of that ineptitude, simply recall his meltdown when faced with criticism over last year’s Christmas tree.

However, it must be said that Micallef’s hysterical antics are not simply a result of his conspicuous lack of emotional regulation. Hysteria is a key tool in the Labour Party’s arsenal of deflection.

It is also one of the telltale signs that the government is scrambling to contain fallout from whichever PR crisis is most pressing at any given moment.

On Thursday, Environment Minister Miriam Dalli staged a press conference alongside Finance Malta director and former deputy mayor for St Paul’s Bay, Carlos Zarb, to denounce the Nationalist Party’s “theatrics” in Parliament, with Zarb chiming in to talk about how the Opposition’s attitude “discourages young people like me from serving in our country.”

Dalli and her younger colleague, who had first hit the headlines when he was appointed to the board of a significant state entity at the age of 19, were referring to a chaotic argument in Parliament between Prime Minister Robert Abela and Opposition MP Adrian Delia.

After being asked to leave Parliament multiple times by the Speaker of the House during a plenary session on Wednesday, Delia pushed back against the prime minister’s assertion that the International Chamber of Commerce’s ruling was a cause for concern for him, arguing that the prime minister failed to recoup millions of euro lost to a fraudulent concession.

While the government went all out to control the official narrative about the arbitration case against Steward before publishing a full copy of the judgment, the choreographed press conferences about the Opposition’s “disrespectful” behaviour in Parliament are also a transparent attempt at steering the conversation away from the undeniably fraudulent nature of the hospitals concession, confirmed by Malta’s Appeals Court. 

Dalli’s comments are especially grating when considering that the government itself regularly abuses parliamentary procedures to avoid accountability for government executives who are brought in to testify about how they spent taxpayer money.

The prime minister himself hardly sets a good example, as evidenced by his recent court troubles involving media outlets that publish coverage critical of the government’s operations.

In October, the prime minister declared he was going to sue NET News over a report published by the opposition’s media arm which claimed that the government intended to press ahead with its contentious planning bills in spite of widespread opposition across the country.

While it remains to be seen whether the prime minister will follow through with his threat to sue NET News, he is presently being sued for defamation by The Shift’s editor in a case that currently remains ongoing.

In both cases, Abela tried – and failed – to intimidate two media outlets by abusing the stature of his office to discredit their reporting. Rather than diminishing the credibility of the coverage, the prime minister unwittingly amplified it.

The government bears a greater responsibility to observe parliamentary procedure adequately, given its position of power. However, the reality is that Jason Micallef syndrome infects both major parties, as evidenced by their tendency to export their bickering to the European stage.

While the government’s deflection tactics have bought it enough time to stave off opposition for the past 12 years, the Labour Party’s hysterical tone and aggressive posturing are also clear signs of an administration that is panicking about narratives that it cannot fully control.