Things have come to a pretty pass when a retiring politician is praised by a has-been using what are described as throwaway lines that are ineptly disguised messages to someone else.
Dr Adrian Vassallo and I are contemporaries, and were in the same year at Tal-Qroqq, albeit in different courses. As I have had occasion to mention before, he wielded a pretty mean snooker cue, but that was the extent of his fame then. In fact, his embrace of the political fray came as something of a surprise. He has now decided to call it a day because he feels he's become more of an embarrassment to Labour than an asset. Such is life: I won't pretend I agree with much of what he stood for, but at least he had the assets to tell it like he saw it, which is a change from saying anything as long as it gets a vote.
He was praised, much in the manner of Caesar, by none other than Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando, the has-been to whom I refer above, who had been moved previously to ask a PQ about my earnings from professional activities. Which reminds me, I need to send some bills out.
The has-been still makes the news, amazingly, although he has rendered himself a has-been. He told Vassallo that it is seemly to retire gracefully rather than cling on to power, which was interpreted by some hacks as a dig at the PM.
That's as may be, and I suspect they are right in their interpretation of Pullicino Orlando's intention, but verily he has proved the childish adage that when you point fingers, you have one pointing one way but three (or four if you include your thumb) pointing towards you.
"Retire gracefully", you say, Pullicino Orlando? Well, why don't you, instead of going off on one every time the whim seizes you, making remarks that are latched onto by anyone whose agenda includes a fervent desire to see you as tormenting your party leader?
"Don't cling to power", you say, Pullicino Orlando? Well, why don't you abide by this, instead of making pathetically obvious pleas to be left heading the MCST if power changes? Is your estimation of your self-worth on the same lines as that Debono person, who many, though not I, see you as emulating?
And while on the subject of retiring gracefully, why did you choose that form of words to aim at someone who is not in power but only at odds with his own, powerless, party? Wouldn't they have made more sense aimed at, taking a name at random, that Debono person, in whose regard Vassallo's words describing himself can also work and very well, too.
This habit of the media of taking everything mumbled by these ephemeral ultra-minor politicians as news really should be broken and replaced by a frame of mind that questions motives rather than simply regurgitating rants.