The Labour Party is in denial, and it is really a bad time to be in that situation. The Nationalist Party must be relaxing quite a bit to know that its main opposition party is not taking stock of its current precarious position.
That is bad news. The PN needs to be pressured to get to change. In fact, the amount of PN representatives’ spin has been drastically reduced recently.
An easy ride for the current administration spells future trouble. It leaves the rest of us up the proverbial creek without a paddle. For make no mistake, at the end of the day it is you and I that are the losers.
An even more arrogant government next time round spells trouble. The reason behind the arrogance of many of the men in government is the lack of real competition, even among themselves.
The current Cabinet does not hold an abundance of talent and the Prime Minister recognised that he should have shifted some off too late to do anything about it.
The position in the Labour camp is not that different and that is one of the reasons why the MLP executive cannot accept the concept of going for an election without Alfred Sant at its helm.
In an interview with Mark Micallef on Sunday, Jason Micallef, the MLP’s General Secretary, said that he is not at all worried that Alfred Sant might not be up to the strains and stresses of a general election campaign. “We are ready for it come what may.” Bravado, maybe, but political acumen, doubtful.
“We are a big party and we can adapt to any situation. Had the election been called in December we would have been ready for it, if it is called now, we’ll be ready too.”
What would the MLP have done if the election were called in December? Delayed Dr Sant’s urgent treatment?
Sounds rather hollow to me, since the general secretary admitted that the MLP has no contingency plan “No, we haven’t been thinking of that. So far, the outlook is very good. I was worried about this, particularly before the operation, but after the medical reassurances I’ve been given, I’m not worried any more. If things change, we will adapt to them as we go along but so far there’s nothing to suggest they will.”
As we go along, is not good enough. Surely the MLP should be thinking ahead. If it does not even have a contingency plan on the leadership issue, how is it going to convince the electorate it can govern?

Homily for thinkers
It has been obvious from the start that with a new Archbishop in Malta things were going to change.
This was demonstrated by the priests chosen to serve in the inner circle at the Curia. And later by the changes in the way the Church is run in Gozo.
There has been a noticeable jump in the intellectual level at which the Church is now communicating with its flock.
The latest example of this was in the Bishop of Gozo’s sermon on Sunday. The parishioners in Xaghra might have been a little stretched by Bishop Mario Grech when he spoke about relativism, ethics and breakthroughs in bioethics. But I am not sure it was them he was addressing, it sounded more like a press release.
“Science divorced from ethics is blind, soulless and operates without the principles that establish what’s right or wrong,” he said.
“There are those who say that this relativism is necessary in a democracy because it guarantees tolerance and respect. However, if that were the case, the majority of the moment will become the fount of truth. History has shown this is not a good criterion to go by,” said the bishop.
I must say I got a bit confused about where exactly the bishop was heading while reading about it, so I am not sure what the parishioners made of it.
He expressed concern that the concept of wrong and right are being bandied about to suit. But one is not sure whether he was referring to marriage, relationships and sexuality, or ethics in science. Or was it an mélange of the two?
Now, I am all in favour of respecting people’s intelligence and am appreciative that the Church has come some way from treating parishioners like school children, but I think that sermonising priests need to focus on one subject at a time and delve a little deeper on each topic. That is if they really want their parishioners to start seriously debating issues that require deep thought and believe that “Natural law gives us a true guarantee that the liberty and dignity of every person is respected and protected from being manipulated by somebody or by some ideology.”

Shameful business
Are you, like me, more than a little interested to know what a 13-year-old girl did to get sent to prison and wind up in Mount Carmel?
I was imagining that this terror had injured someone seriously with a knife, or burnt down at least one room.
I asked Father Mark Montebello of Mid-Dlam ghad-Dawl what the girl had been up to. Even if she had behaved as badly as I had imagined, prison is no place for a child. I was told that she is now no longer at Mount Carmel. That was not the right place to send the child either, especially when I found out what she had done.
It rather reminded me of a comedy I had seen on the telly, where a superhero, not au fait with human children’s development, made a police report about a toddler for pushing his son over in the playground.
The girl, when still 12, was involved in a quarrel with other girls in Valletta and – wait for it – she pulled the hair of one of them. For that she was fined Lm500 by Magistrate Anthony Vella.
It is probably more than a common criminal, who could earn the money, would have got. But expecting a child to cough up Lm500 for pulling another child’s hair was utterly absurd.
When she did not, she was thrown into prison.
Father Mark told me: “The prison authorities were very embarrassed with a girl of 13 on their hands”. At least she did not spend a single night in jail, but she was transferred to a mental hospital where she spent six days.
What a shameful business. We must be the only ‘civilised’ country that incarcerates children for fighting and hair pulling.

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