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Cyrus Engerer: Joseph – Malta li rrid ngħix fiha. SKS, 2013.

This nicely produced hardback was published earlier this year during the electoral campaign.

It was indeed one of the important instruments used by the Labour party to establish Joseph Muscat’s image as that of an able and likeable young man who, at the head of his party, would extricate us from a Malta that was depicted by the party as a sink of corruption and a land in which far too many people knew what poverty was or were dangerously close to it.

Cyrus Engerer writes with all the enthusiasm of the recent convert. This book is, in political terms, what hagiographies of the Church’s saints try to be.

It traces the irresistible rise to fame and success of a young man from Burmarrad, born into a family that included both Nationalist and Labour voters. He was given a good education at the Jesuits’ St Aloysius College and then at the University of Malta, where he graduated in commerce and economics.

Incidentally, Engerer should have known better than to translate BA (Hons) as ‘Baċellerat Onorarju fl-Arti’.

Muscat seems to have been a hard worker from the start. Attracted to the Labour Party, he soon became active in it and caught the eye of Alfred Sant, then leader of the party, who encouraged him. His impressive election in 2004 to the European Parliament, where he conducted himself creditably, established him very firmly within his party. His ability, coupled with his youthful charm, led him to succeed Sant as leader after Labour’s electoral defeat in 2008.

This book is, in political terms, what hagiographies of the Church’s saints try to be

Engerer writes at some length on political ideas. It seems that Muscat has always given much importance to what his grandfather Ġamri used to say, that “the truth is not always to be found on the same side” (Is-sewwa mhux dejjem ikun fuq l-istess naħa).

This saying is surely behind Muscat’s attempt to create a movement, rather than a party, one including people having a range of ideas and principles.

His ‘Malta tagħna lkoll’ pronouncement, that must have led many a disgruntled or apathetic Nationalist to vote Labour for the first time in 2013, was revealed to be the electoral slogan that it was when faced with the reality of power and keeping his party happy.

Muscat has now placed hundreds of loyal Labour Party members in positions where they can influence the way things go, at the same time as he offered to keep people from other parties involved in some ways with the management of the country.

He has gone out of his way to make sure he kept the various elements of his party united, and hesitated very little about nominating Anġlu Farrugia, who broke with him so clamorously in 2012, to the high post of Speaker of the House.

The photo showing him whispering in the ear of a suspicious-looking Dom Mintoff, whose death and state funeral last year provided Muscat and his party with a great political advantage, is surely iconic.

He is clearly a determined politician. If he succeeds in carrying out his electoral promise to lighten the burden of Malta’s production of energy, he may make it difficult for the new leader of the opposition to forge too far ahead with the Nationalist Party’s revival following its heavy electoral defeat.

Engerer writes admiringly about Muscat’s happy family life and joy in becoming a father, and provides a wealth of family photos, some of them worthier of a personal family album than of a formal publication. Muscat’s encounters with local and foreign politicians and statesmen are amply illustrated.

The last one-third of the book carries the text of Muscat’s major addresses given between March 2009 and June 2012.

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