Some great twit once said that we live in interesting times. I definitely wish—and I know I’m repeating myself from my previous blog post—I lived in uninteresting, boring days where no €60 million sums were bandied about. What does one do with all that money anyway? Swim in a pool of euros while smoking or snusing away?

Anyway let’s examine some of the personae in this, unfortunately for us Maltese dolts, drama.

John Dalli (JD): man who nearly had it all. Pipped at the post for the top job in the PN. Therefore beaten for the even more prestigious position of Prime Minister of our tiny island of Malta, so tiny we were quite unknown. If only we had remained that —a dot in the Med sea.

JD missed the boat so kicked up a fuss and appointed himself father confessor to all plotters and dissatisfied backbenchers of the PN. So he was kicked “upstairs” by his nemesis, Gonzi. Why wasn’t he just ditched? The job upstairs was full of perks and powers, which he seemed to hate, so spent quite some time on tiny island of Malta pestering and bothering Gonzi and his ilk (or is that clique?). Became, for long time, great star for all Labour-leaning media—anything that bashes Gonzi is a god-send seemed the JD mantra.

Now JD is heavily involved in a sea of denials and, seeing his star fast fading away, trying hard to keep star shining by casting doubts about anyone involved in the smoking world. He resigned, he didn’t resign. He didn’t sign the letter. He wasn’t sent a letter. Silence would be more than golden for us all.

Barroso & Co (B&C): He seems to believe that there is no smoke without fire so didn’t even give Dalli time to ring his family before resigning or to take his bunny out of his magical hat to save himself and Malta this terrible embarrassment. B&C must be seeing a bit beyond a tainted plume of smoke.

Lawrence Gonzi (LG): More sinned against than sinning right now and might be in line to claim, like Alfred Sant once did, that he feels like St Sebastian. That saint was shot at by a few Roman soldiers as punishment for being a soldier and a Christian. Like St Sebastian Gonzi does not seem able to die: not literally but as Prime Minister. LG has withstood all sorts of problems from all quarters. This last one is actually his doing —he kicked Dalli upstairs so JD’s tumbling down should be LG’s and only his responsibility. Bad choice, wrong choice, wrong plan, now coming back to attack LG.

Silvio Zammit (SZ): One day you’re flaunting the wholesomeness of Mqaret and their oiliness, the next you are asking for €60 million to grease your way to Commissioner Dalli’s presence. Or at least so it is alleged. The vice in Vice-mayor must really have started to mean something sinister. SZ is bringer of circuses, animals and strange feats of trapezing and stealth. No such animal should be allowed to contest elections but in this strange country of ours anything topsy-turvy seems the right way to do it.

End result? People in the wider but less wild world think we are super-cunning and need something more than a bottle of Malt to get us to play ball.

 

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