About that apology

I started writing this literally minutes after the electricity came back on Tuesday evening, and I’m finishing it at the crack of dawn on Wednesday, during a subsequent cut that has continued for hours.

For reasons I do not pretend to understand (anything more technical than a light switch defeats me), I still have some power in part of the house. Presumably it has something to do with the three-phase supply. Lucky me.

The fact remains that there’s a massive power cut going on and, according to the courteous bloke on the end of the line, it’s all over the place, Gozo too. Meaning that we are once again reminded that in Robert Abela’s “best years”, electricity is no longer a public utility. It is a lucky dip.

For people with nefarious thoughts about taking the piss out of the Entitled Princeling, the timing could not have been more perfect had it been scripted. Just before the lights went out, I had spotted the headline announcing that he had issued an “unconditional apology” for the power cuts that had occurred the previous day.

My immediate reaction was that he might consider inserting that apology where the monkey sticks the nuts. Better still, he might retrieve from the same place the resignation that ought to accompany repeated failure, or, at the very least, the resignation of inept twerps such as Miriam Dalli, who has the gall to mutter about apologies too.

Then curiosity got the better of me. What, exactly, is an “unconditional” apology?

Government spin has become so detached from reality that even an apology requires branding. It cannot simply be an apology. It must be an unconditional apology, carefully focus-grouped, polished and released into the media ecosystem in the hope that adjectives might somehow compensate for the absence of competence.

Did he mean, “I apologise, provided you all stop complaining, applaud our press conferences, ignore the propaganda and remember who to vote for”?

In today’s Malta one never quite knows what fresh grammatical principle the Court of Castille may discover overnight.

Oh well, it got him the front page of The Times, so I suppose that’s some consolation. For him, if no one else.

Unfortunately, the freezer does not restart because the communications consultants found a more emotive turn of phrase. Businesses do not recover lost income because the Prime Minister pretends to look suitably contrite. Elderly people sitting in sweltering homes are not comforted by carefully crafted expressions of regret.

They would probably settle for the lights staying on.

Remember when we were told Malta possessed world-class infrastructure? Every new tower, every apartment block and every planning permit was hailed as proof of an economic miracle.

Anyone who suggested that perhaps the country’s infrastructure might not keep pace with the construction frenzy was dismissed as a doom merchant, an enemy of progress or someone who simply wanted Malta to fail.

We were assured that Malta had become the economic miracle of Europe. The envy of everyone else. The country that had discovered the secret formula.

Yet here we are, in the middle of summer, waiting for the return of electricity and discovering that keeping the lights on has become an achievement apparently beyond the capacity of a government that never tires of congratulating itself.

No doubt the slavering lickspittles of the regime over at Labour’s ONE TV will reduce this piece to something along the lines of “Il-Boċċa jieħu gost bil-qtugħ tad-dawl.” They always confuse criticism of failure with pleasure at its consequences.

Prime Minister, please note: governments are not elected to apologise for essential services failing. They are elected to ensure they do not fail in the first place. When power cuts become routine, the problem is no longer the wording of the apology. It is the competence of those who have to keep issuing it.