WHY

Never let it be said that I don't take my readers' advice to heart, except when it involves shutting up or changing my opinion because it doesn't suit them.

If you click on the blog archive conveniently sited below (when people deign to comment, it's below the comments) apart from being able to access my wit and wisdom, you can check out the old comments. Amongst the more recent comments on the preceding blog, there was a gem of wisdom from Peter Prictoe, who suggested that I change the subject as the proceedings had taken on a meandering aspect. I am loath to stop people when they're having fun, but needs must, I suppose.

Why, then (and I ask partly to change the subject and partly to annoy lil'elves) did Dr CMJ (Dr "Call Me Joseph" Muscat for those who didn't get it first time and haven't my mobile number to text the question) think he should mark Gonzi's 100 days in government with a press conference all of his own? I've no idea how many days Dr CMJ has been at the head of the MLP (100 hours?) and I'm not even sure it's relevant, but why did he want to commemorate the fact that it is his opponent who is governing the country?

Was this a back-handed slap at the MLP's previous leadership, a way of telling us all "there but for the grace of the electorate, go us and it's not my fault it isn't"? Or does Dr CMJ really believe that because his party (albeit under a different leadership) got almost enough votes to be elected, he constitutes 49.999% of the Prime Ministership?

If it is the latter, which I suspect is the message he's desperately trying to put across to his party's supporters, before they pack up and go home for the next five years, then he has a bit of an odd European outlook on national governance which is not well founded. Forgive the starkness, but in democracies such as ours, if your party has sufficient numbers in the House to carry the day, then it's you who is in Government and there's no legal or moral obligation to share power.

On the mainland of Europe people seem to see things differently, but that's mainly because there's hardly ever a clearly defined and workable majority in the relevant house, even if strange notions of power sharing are sometimes mumbled about.

Not to put too fine a point on it, whether or not the MLP supports the Government on anything is hardly relevant, except where legal regimes that have to survive changes in Government are concerned.

For everything else, there's Mastercard ... No, but, seriously, whether or not the MLP supports the Government on the privatisation of the shipyards or on efforts to combat the effects of oil prices or, for that matter, the success of our next entry for the Eurovision Song Contest is utterly immaterial to the running of the country. Under our system of government, the unions, for instance, have more power than the Opposition, which has a defined but strictly limited role.

The unions can chuck their not inconsiderable weight around with gay abandon and put the dampers on the Government's enthusiasm to do something but the Opposition can do precious little in practice.

I suspect that the lil'elves will raise themselves up to their full height at this point and start spluttering, with greater or lesser coherence, about what the anti-democratic Nationalists did between 1981 and 1987, when the country was living on something of a knife-edge. To this I would merely point out that the illegitimacy, on moral terms, of the Mintoff/KMB regime of those years is sufficient to scotch their arguments.

This is not to say that if Dr CMJ and his side-kicks have something to contribute to the debate they should not do so. This is, in fact, the very essence of the function of the Opposition in our system: they are there, as is the fourth estate, to keep the Government on its toes and honest, to the extent that any Government can be kept thus, and to add to the national interest.

This is not necessarily achieved by pandering exclusively to the special interest groups that constitute the core of the MLP's support.

Just because the General Workers' Union doesn't want the shipyards to be privatised, this does not automatically mean that the idea should be opposed at the political level. Knee jerk reactions such as those the (very) marginally relevant CNi and the absolutely irrelevant AN have don't add anything to the equation, either, except to make people even more eager to see something done.

Continuing the train of thought, there is nothing to say that MLP exponents, unless they are qualified personally by having other attributes, should automatically find a place at the negotiating table. As I was writing this, timesofmalta.com tells us that Dr CMJ said that the MLP was ready to to anything in the national interest, just like a parent did anything for his children.

Leaving the patronising hyperbole aside, which is difficult because it's getting a tad irritating, especially coming from a chap who is trying to project an image of youthful go-gettingness (but instead sounding like Mintoff at his most pompous) what is this guy trying to say? Was it that the MLP in the past backward in coming forward in the national interest, then?

Or is Muscat trying to justify not being totally obstructive to the MLP's stalwarts, for whom co-operation with the Government is tantamount to high treason? Perhaps his side-kicks can explain. The bottom line is simple: if anyone within the MLP has a contribution to make, then he or she should make it and there's an end to it. Simply demanding to be made an equal partner in Government, however, is quite simply not on: that's not the way the game works here and Muscat knows this and should stop trying to pretend otherwise.

Let me put it another way, so the lil'elves can understand it: you might feel hard done by because you thought it was your turn to be in Government, but hey, tough, your leaders let you down, so suck it up.