What highfalutin principles are being enunciated. One would think this is a country of thinkers, thinking we are all Socrates, not the footballer. Everyone, including The Times, wants stability and suddenly everyone wants to safeguard the national interest. All because Nationalist MP Franco Debono is defying his Prime Minister. Elected on the PN ticket, Dr Debono has realised the PN is as self-seeking as the best of us. The difference is that the PN is a big thing, with an electoral backing and supporters, some, as blind as bats.

I mean, only consider: Eddie Fenech Adami, a former MP, party leader, Prime Minister and, to boot, President of Malta, called on Dr Debono to resign his MP’s seat because he threatened to deny the government his vote in Parliament.

I don’t think Dr Debono has taken a clear stand on whether he will abstain on parliamentary votes, in which the Speaker (when it matters the Speaker is not a kannol mingħajr krema) will cast his vote for the government, or whether Dr Debono will vote against the government.

I think back to 1998 when Dom Mintoff, then 82, accused his Labour Party leader of losing his bearings and brought down his party’s government. Since then the PN remained in government.

Did Dr Fenech Adami think Mr Mintoff should resign then? The situation is the same and if he did, Dr Fenech Adami, leader of the opposition, stayed silent.

The national interest, the stability of the government, did not come into the equation then. The Times never uttered anything about stability, either. Not in the sense it did this January 11, in the editorial in which it pleaded with the party leaders to “stop the scaremongering”.

“No one has the right to threaten the country’s stability,” The Times reported (January 11) on the PN’s emergency meeting of the executive committee. It also said “the only honourable path” after betraying the wishes and intentions of his constituents was resignation.

The group expressed its “full support” and promised “full loyalty” in the present circumstances. It has also deemed Dr Debono’s actions as a “serious failure of loyalty” towards the leader, the PN and the constituents.

Was that what the PN felt in 1998 about Mr Mintoff’s shenanigans? Or are such principles to be observed only when the PN is in government, and threatened?

All Mr Mintoff was complaining about in 1998 were the electricity and water tariffs which were being changed. Dr Debono is complaining about serious justice failings, about back-breaking costs for families and about the ministerial increase of €600 a month the Cabinet awarded themselves.

And yet, the PN parliamentary group expressed confidence in Dr Gonzi.

Thinking of the country’s interests, I do not know of any Nationalist MP disagreeing in public with the PN leadership going to Aldo Moro, as the late Guido de Marco said they did, to complain at Italy extending financial assistance to Malta. The PN were in opposition then, and the assistance was being given to Mr Mintoff’s government. All the PN’s big heads, such as Dr Fenech Adami, Prof. de Marco, Ugo Mifsud Bonnici, Ċensu Tabone and others, pleaded with Mr Moro to withhold the aid to Malta.

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