Election Playbook: On those staying silent and others running their mouths

No photo-ops this time? The news of the evacuation of several families from their homes has dominated Friday’s news cycle. These families, who had to leave everything behind to sleep in a hotel while worrying that their homes could collapse, are not the first to go through such distress, and unfortunately, they won’t be the last. During all of this however, there was a noticeable silence from major parties. PN Leader Alex Borg had to be prompted by journalists before he could blame Labour for its record on construction. He later published a video on the issue after families were allowed to return home. And we saw no photos of Construction Reform Minister Jonathan Attard wearing a hard hat and BCA jacket on site as if he was going to prop up the collapsed foundation himself. Why are big party politicians so scared of speaking about this incident? Does it have anything to do with the fact that the development in question is tied to Anton “Il-Franċiż” Camilleri? At least it’s clear that during election campaigns, sucking up to your biggest donors is more important than reassuring people that you’ll work so they never have to evacuate their own homes.

Chris Bonett's clickbait: Transport Minister Chris Bonett has educated us on the meaning of “missing the wood for the trees" and opted to respond to criticism over his use of the power of incumbency through clickbait and putting words in people’s mouths. A bit of context: a Times of Malta article pointed out that during the election campaign, a disproportionate number of infrastructure works miraculously appeared in his district. Bonett then took aim at Andrew Azzopardi’s post (which has a total of two likes), saying that people are no longer ashamed of doing such things to boost their chances for re-election. Pretending to be a complete idiot who didn’t understand Azzopardi’s post, Bonett said that he isn’t ashamed of signing off on infrastructural works in the south of Malta and implied that Azzopardi would only like to see such works in the north. What a disgrace. The only reason you took aim at Azzopardi instead of addressing the real issue is because you know slamming him will get you support from Labourites who’ve been taught to hate him and other government critics. And before you write me off as a conspiracy theorist, let me remind you that I used to work at ONE News, where I got a good education in how to trigger such reactions from party supporters.