In goes the foot

There comes a point where even the most loyal party supporter has to wonder whether the government is listening to itself.

With the peasantry enduring power cuts for hour upon hour and day upon day, Prince Abela has ordered Enemalta to accelerate work on the electricity distribution network. Decorum prevents me from describing what the Entitled One should do with his decree. Rolling it into a tight cylinder and jamming it is involved.

Just to make his insouciance in the face of his incompetence and crassness even more galling, he invited us to believe that the present mess is really the fault of ‘successive administrations’ which failed to invest in the network.

Labour has been in government since March 2013. Not for three years. Not for five. Thirteen.

Every major decision affecting Malta’s energy sector during that period has been taken by Labour governments.

These people decided on every budget, every infrastructure priority, every ministerial appointment, every board appointment at Enemalta.

They and no one else failed to deliver on the promise that the country’s infrastructure was being prepared for unprecedented economic growth. This was after the famous ‘done deal’, triumphantly presented as the definitive solution to Malta’s energy future.

There were the endless boasts that Labour had rescued Enemalta. There were years of speeches proclaiming that Malta possessed one of Europe’s most secure electricity systems. Whenever anyone questioned whether infrastructure was keeping pace with relentless construction, record population growth and soaring electricity demand, they were dismissed as professional pessimists trying to talk the country down.

Now, suddenly, the culprit is “successive administrations”.

I suppose technically, he’s correct: Abela’s administration with Dalli at the helm succeeded Muscat’s with Konrad Mizzi at the helm.  Oh well, as long as Labour’s ONE TV can take a break from attacking people on the other side and report that Cyprus had a power cut, all is right with the world.

Just to prove that his awesomeness has no lower limit, Abela demonstrated his phenomenal grasp of propriety when he declared that justice must be delivered ‘within a reasonable time’ after the shooting of two police officers.

On that proposition there can obviously be no disagreement whatsoever, but seriously, he mumbled platitudes like that with the Yorgen Fenech trial, about Daphne Caruana Galizia’s assassination almost 10 years ago, which is just starting.  I’ll stop there on that one.

There was more, on a less important level, but telling, nonetheless.

Consider his proud reference to the power to deport people if the police think they are a threat to public order. He was only talking about chucking out drunken oiks making Paceville more of a sewer than it has become, but in the midst of growing public frustration over infrastructure, congestion and public services, you have to wonder whether the political messaging has conveniently transitioned towards reassuring voters that troublesome foreigners can simply be shown the door.

In a single interview, a bit like one of those ‘‘look at me, ma, I’m fantastic’’ celebrations at the hands of a public relations guru, we got a glimpse of his propensity to put his foot in it with a regularity that makes you wonder if he gets it.