I said last week that I do not watch TV on Friday evenings. Well, at least that is what I do when I do not have a cold. Right now I do have a cold, so Friday I turned myself into a couch potato together with good company and opted to watch the two men debate.
The end result was a patronising and over confident Lawrence Gonzi versus an untrained political speaker by the name of Joseph Muscat. The latter could have won the day and could be a formidable opponent, but he still has to master the tricks of political squabbling.
To watch Gonzi talk, was akin to watching a charlatan deliver the same speech over and over again.
Gonzi has become as slippery as an eel, but there were moments when he could not find the right answers to retaliate.
He says that he has delivered on all levels but in reality we know that he is simply the man in the lime-light. He is boastful, self-centred and more importantly, belittling. He does not care if the Gozo terminal cost millions, if the Manwel Dimech Bridge cost millions more, if the Mater Dei project cost the taxpayer millions because of his administration’s incompetence, and he takes any criticism as political spin.
Nonetheless, Muscat was childish, most especially when he addressed Gonzi as Lawrence. More stupidly, he was wrong when he retorted at Gonzi with questions instead of proposals.
One would still hope for a Muscat that will grow into his shoes. He can, but he must act fast.
Which brings me to Dr Muscat and his dreamlike road map to winning the next election.
Gonzi said that he has five years to implement his policies, so why hurry? When asked how he would implement his ludicrous electoral promise to choose board members for government agencies after a call for applications, he said that he was still studying options. So in the meantime he continues to appoint people with clear conflict of interests or individuals with one credit in their CV: blue blood.
When prompted, and note the choice of my words – prompted – about the breast cancer fighting drug Herceptin, that is still not on the National free drug schedule, he said that it would be introduced with this budget at a cost of some €1 million plus.
Followed of course by the usual verbal diarrhoea of how much we care for the lives of people and that everything has a price. That sum is far inferior to what is given to Mekanika or Group 4 in one year at Mater Dei.
Of course he did not say that were it not for the media and incessant prodding from breast cancer patients, Gonzi last Friday would have still nothing to say about Herceptin.
The women who are six feet under and did not have the Lm20,000 or more to purchase Herceptin are of course not here to pass their comments. U hallina, Sur Prim Ministru.
When projects, budgeted with very clear parameters, overrun their limits by millions, the Office of the Prime Minister does not wait for Xarabank to announce that payments will be due in the very near future.
And on breast screening he had, as usual, the same repetitive rhetoric that what he promises he always sees done. I guess, the same applies to his open-ended message about a new way of doing politics, about electoral reform, about wind farms, about the Opera House, City Gate and a hundred and one other declarations that would fill four beefy MaltaToday editions without the classifieds.
But if Gonzi is not be taken seriously, then Muscat should really be told that this is no Boy Scout territory.
Before he enters the arena with a seasoned natural like Gonzi he should remember one thing. The odds are strangely against him, and the only thing in his favour is the time factor: 25 years of a Nationalist administration is simply not on.
Muscat should talk about proposals. He was good on taxation, and he was good on the surcharge, but he needs to come out with proposal that will tell people from where the money is going to come. It is not good enough telling people that Austin Gatt is a cowboy. We all know that Austin could easily play part of the John Wayne. What we need to know is how Muscat will make up for the shortfall!
It is rather nice to say that no one will be suffering the surcharge, but how will Muscat foot the rising energy bill?
Out of the precincts of Xarabank, Muscat has made the same mistake of proposing or stating things without seeing where they lead.
His silly assertion that we face a crisis with the arrival of so many migrants was typical of a right wing politician, not a modern progressive. He should mince his words about migrants, if he is indirectly fomenting xenophobia. And he should also tell his shadow interior minister Michael Falzon to stop saying silly things about Somali migrants.
His attack on the EU agreement on ‘burden sharing’ was yet another opportunity for the PN to sow doubt in Labour’s amour propre for the EU.
If he had attacked the need to regularise and enforce decent working conditions and proper salaries for ‘black’ migrants, then he may have kick-started a debate about why badly paid foreign workers or illegal workers are a threat to Maltese workers, and not the presence of migrants and their importance to a future Maltese economy.
But Muscat does not have a coterie of advisors willing or capable to tell him the things he does not want to hear. His choice of Mario Vella is yet another example of why Labour invariably gets it wrong.
Again earlier this month, he had expressed and called for a free vote on divorce. Yet, what is the point of having a free vote if most of your MP’s will vote against a divorce bill? Muscat, like Gonzi, must ram ‘principles’ down the throats of his MPs.
Muscat cannot have a half-baked approach to any issue. He must take the lead: people love to be led, people love to be told what to do.
A political leader must lead, not follow, and propose, not question.
More importantly Joseph Muscat must be a real leader. He cannot be conditioned by the Nationalist press and media. If he believes in something he should go for it. He does not have the handicaps of Alfred Sant. Sant was an eccentric, retentive and too polite in debates – allowing his adversary to cut him to bits and, worst of all, he did not look good on television.
He need not worry about being labelled by the PN media: they will label him anyhow. And the party of demonising has not even started.
If George Abela were in his shoes today, the PN media would have already found ways of decimating the man. They would have already emptied the files and wardrobe in search of skeletons. And they would have forgotten about all the nice words they had had for Abela before the Labour leadership election.
Muscat has to go for it. And there can be no half measures.
If everyone expects the Labour party and the Nationalist party to dance to each other’s tunes, then please play a Te Deum to democracy.
We need confrontation in politics. Without conflicting political ideas, there can be no democracy.
We need to be told about the conflicts of interest, and of people who are not fit to run for office or manage a government agency.
People expect Muscat to bite not growl, walk not talk, and propose, not dilly-dally.
Because at the very end of the day, we not talking about the narrow interests of Labourites here, but the interests of our small nation, crying out for a viable opposition that can stand up and be counted.

Why Louis Galea finds font size 14 offensive
Dr Louis Galea is that former politician who once declared he was a part-time farmer. He did this to justify his humble abode in the pristine setting of Fawwara.
As minister back then, he had presided over the calamity known as the auxiliary workers’ training scheme, a recruitment drive that turned out to be a largely unaudited exercise, characterised by exaggerated spending in direct orders to many of Galea’s cronies, or shall I say canvassers.
We are talking of hundreds of thousands of liri back in 1991. And guess what, on the day of the 1992 election, the files concerning the AWTS were stolen!
By whom? God knows.
Galea is now Speaker of the House, and his eyes are on the Presidency.
This week, as Speaker he was faced with a request from the former Labour leader Alfred Sant to decide on a breach of privilege, after Austin Gatt was so kind to suggest that Sant had spun a story about the alleged hacking of his emails, through MaltaToday.
Now before I get on with this, I should say that Dr Gatt is quite aware of how distant MaltaToday is to Alfred Sant. To even suggest that we are in cahoots with Dr Sant is farcical. But then what do you expect when Austin shoots from the hip?
Back to Louis Galea, where the part-time agriculturalist has decreed, in his power as Speaker of the House, that there was enough reason to allow the request for a breach of privilege against Austin Gatt to be decided upon by the House.
But he went on.
He said that he could not but comment on the report of MaltaToday Midweek last Wednesday, which was indeed the most extensive of all parliamentary reports that day on Gatt’s ministerial statement on MITTS, with the header “Chaos in the House” in font size 14.
What happened was that Dr Galea chose to castigate MaltaToday on its report, and to decree that the House was never in any chaos but in fact had a rather dignified debate.
Now, really and truly last Wednesday MaltaToday was the only newspaper to cover the story for what it really was. The Independent as usual played to the PN’s tune by picking on the Sant spinning angle; l-orrizont forgot all about it; The Times’s chose the wrong heading for such a report; and of course, In-Nazzjon painted Malta as the greatest place on earth.
Nonetheless the 14-point header (it’s basically the size of a dozen fleas having a pow-wow) entitled "Chaos in the House" led Galea to extend his remit and pass judgement over the free press.
Thankfully, the European Court of Human Rights has already ruled that Members of Parliament cannot arraign civilians for some kangaroo court on a so-called breach of privilege. Otherwise we at MaltaToday would be already there, waiting to face trial for having used that ominous word “chaos” to describe the ramblings of MPs and how the Opposition lashed out at Austin Gatt.
The only reason why Galea wasted his time to lambast MaltaToday was to keep his apparent equidistance from the two parties, and give the impression that he is a paladin of independence from all parties.
As we are all aware, to replace Fenech Adami as President you have to have, not necessarily of course, the support of both sides. By hitting out at MaltaToday, Galea believes that he can sweeten the bitter pill for the Nationalists after having accepted decided in Sant’s favour.
Good job Louis!

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