WETTING THEMSELVES

Hello again - the liberty of working without a deadline which is the main attraction of blogging for the blogger (if not for the myriad fans of said blogger) combined with one of those weeks, which was preceded by a rather fine, if short, weekend in Ortigia, to ensure that a bit too much time has passed since the last time my words of wisdom floated before you on your screen.

It's been quite a week, hasn't it? For the President, it brought him into touch with the reality that the body isn't a perpetual motion machine, not at our age, anyway. Hopefully, he's OK again and back into arm-twisting for charity mode by the time you read this. Stick your hands into your wallet or whatever it is you use to make payments and do what you have to do.

For the Labour Party, it was panty-wetting time with a vengeance. For reasons known to himself, and no doubt discussed with his party leader, Dr Franco Debono did not vote on amendments to a motion, which led the Speaker to have to cast his vote in order to keep things on track.

This has been interpreted by Labour's chorus-girls as indicative of a Prime Minister out of control of his party, with Joseph Muscat, who has no experience (much) of being out of control of his party, unlike his predecessor, to deliver himself of the earth-shattering declaration that he is seeing a Government that is crumbling.

Now, it is understandable that Muscat, faced with four more years or so of trying to keep his ducks in a row, with a party machine that is riddled with angst and self-doubt, should succumb to the pleasurable schadenfreude that accompanies seeing your best friends in difficulties. When the people you're perceiving as struggling are not even your best friends, then the feeling must approach the intensely pleasurable.

This feeling must, politics dictate, be transmitted down the line to the faithful, who will then have to be bolstered in their belief that it's not actually going to be four more years but less, rather in the manner of Dr Alfred Sant's Labour Government of the 1996-98 hiccup. Said bolstering is carried out by the chorus-girls, as already noted, marshalled perhaps by the chorus-girl-in-chief, who has been conspicuous by her absence from the public scene, though I'm told she's been beavering away heavily trying to get her boss accepted in what passes for alta societa' in Malta.

But the glee and enjoyment really should take a bit of a break now, it being Xmas and all that. What actually happened here, let's take a look at the situation with some degree of dispassion and less enthusiasm, shall we?

Keeping back-benchers in order, to use the immortal words of Leo McGarry (West Wing, still the best serial ever) is akin to getting cats to walk in a parade and when said back-benchers are feisty bunch who take their duties seriously (such duties including making sure the Government doesn't lose its head up its own bottom, which is a duty the Opposition is signally failing to carry out) you probably would have to add a healthy dose of catnip to the equation.

So can you really accuse the PM of not being in control? Hardly, I would have thought - it's losing control when there's a money bill on the table or a vote of confidence, and it's hardly likely that this PM would be dumb enough to allow a vote of confidence on something trivial, like, say, a yacht marina or anything like that.

To Labour's eternal chagrin, the whole storm has blown over and then some, unlike the weather outside, which is trying to prove that this whole global-warming thing is a bit of a myth. Franco Debono has made it pretty darn clear that he's not about to blow the Government out of the water, and that pretty much applies for all the other back-benchers too, though I'm sure that the PM would rather like them to cut it out for a bit, what with him probably wanting to avoid being in the next bed to the President.

You know, stress and all that does things to men of our age.

Incidentally, and it's only peripherally pertinent to the main story, which is that there's not going to be an election any time soon, there's a sweet story going the rounds about how someone who has been giving Joseph Muscat a bit of a tutorial about protocol and that sort of thing got his nose put slightly out of place. Joseph has been told that keeping Kings waiting is not on, as I'm sure he knows, but it's as much his staff's fault as his own, really.

Well, the story goes that Mr Muscat was processing through the air terminal on returning from some trip or other and he came across a group of copper-cadets. Being uncapped, they didn't salute, as uniformed personnel are supposed to do when coming across holders of Constitutional positions such as the Leader of the Opposition.

Someone from Muscat's staff took umbrage (not Muscat himself, I'm told, who should be above this) and upbraided the wet-behind-the-ears coppers.

There were some red faces all round, one hears, but on the part of the delegation, who were told in no uncertain terms that they'd better brush up on their protocol a bit more before going around trying to manage other people's.

Four more years of this is probably what Labour need, for them to have a chance of getting it right.