The rejection of the government's (second) nominee to the EU's Court of Auditors has brought the Premier Joe's Trolls and Minions out in force. This was always going to happen, because they had already made it ultra-clear that it was expected that all shoulders would be put to the wheel in the effort to get Leo Brincat appointed.
And woe betide anyone who didn't stand up to be counted, duly wrapped in the flag.
The comments boards that are generally populated by the T&Ms (you can tell who they are, in English they are quasi-incomprehensible, in Maltese oozing class hatred) were lit up over the last couple of days.
The European People's Party has achieved the status of "dawk iz-zibel Nazzi, negattivi bhal Sajmin" (loosely translated as those rubbish Nationalists, negative like Simon [Busuttil]).
In short, they're having conniptions because, yet again, their party has had its face reddened and its bottom very severely smacked: it's quite obviously our fault, the people who do the PN's bidding and have enough power to sway the whole European Parliament.
They're having conniptions because, yet again, their party has had its face reddened and its bottom very severely smacked.
What the T&Ms don't realise when they accuse us of treachery, and I think it's a case of not having the capacity to do so, this time, not a matter of choosing not to understand, is that the Honourable (for he still bears that title, if only for having remained an MP) Leo Brincat was not batting for Malta when his nomination was being mulled over by the powers-that-be.
He was, in fact, playing in Premier Muscat's colours, those of the team that were whipped into line by Godfrey Farrugia when the vote of confidence in that Mizzi fellow was put before the House.
Leo Brincat was not the embodiment of Malta when his nomination was under scrutiny. When, eventually, Premier Muscat manages to unearth a nominee who can pass muster and not cause a nation to blush to the roots of its hair (those of us who have any, anyway) Malta will have a member on the Court of Auditors (it still does, as we speak, anyway)
Just to make his position even less tenable, Brincat scored an own-goal of gargantuan proportions when he said - and again, I suspect he really believed this when he said (surely not?) - that he voted in favour of Mizzi et al because, in the British tradition, the whip was a three-liner and he had no choice.
No choice, dear boy? Have you even the slightest grasp of politics as she is spoke in Westminster? If there is a three-line whip in place, you still have a choice: brave the wrath of the whips and see if they have the spine to have you ousted from under the whip, or be a man and resign, as a matter of principle.
You know what principles are, one trusts?
You know, those pesky things you find you have when you examine your conscience and act on the result of that process? They are not attributes to be trotted out when you're asked many months later, during a job-interview for a pretty responsible (and lucrative) why you didn't vote against that blasted motion.
The Trolls & Minions had better, frankly, shut it once and for all, because Brincat was not rejected by the European Parliament (having squeezed through on the vote of Doctor Alfred Sant, who squirmed his way onto the Committee to swing its vote by a whisker) by the EPP alone. His ass was whipped royally, by a wide cross-section of the Parliament, including a very good dollop of Premier Muscat's party's fellow travellers, the dear old Socialists.
You have to wonder, incidentally, how much longer this grouping will tolerate Premier Joe's bunch within their ranks. They must be having serious crises of conscience about how such a brazenly "pro-business" assemblage can call itself Socialist.
And then you get Premier Muscat saying, with a straight face, that the PN's Bills of Exchange Scheme is embarrassing us in Europe. Seriously, he ignores Passports-for-Cash, Panama Papers, New Zealand Trust Companies, Medical Visas for Healthy Libyans and all that other stuff and has the outright gall to say that?