Minister’s daily epigram on Labour crisis: Put out the fire, not the fire alarm

At an urgent Labour parliamentary group meeting on Monday, education minister and Labour veteran Evarist Bartolo gave Prime Minister Joseph Muscat his vote of confidence.

But Bartolo has been a critic of the PM’s chief of staff Keith Schembri and tourism minister Konrad Mizzi, having succinctly called on them to leave in his epigrammatic Facebook posts.

Tuesday’s post seems to hint at what happened during Monday’s meeting: “If you have to lead better, you must learn over time – and it’s not easy – that when somebody complains and criticises something you are responsible for, listen well and heed them well. Because if there is a fire in a building, you don’t switch off the alarm – you put out the fire.”

So far, so unclear: but perhaps Bartolo’s message is an imploration to Muscat to take seriously concerns by his Labour MPs that he must sack Schembri and Mizzi over their association with the company 17 Black, which belongs to Tumas magnate Yorgen Fenech, who since last week has been arrested as a person of interest in the Daphne Caruana Galizia investigation.

Bartolo’s clearest reference as yet was on Monday when he specifically said that Schembri and Mizzi should resign from their government positions