By resident guest George Farrugia Calleja:
If Joseph Muscat and Adrian Delia had been found to have slunk off into some obscure corner of the least salubrious bar in the most disreputable part of town to smoke a crack pipe together, they wouldn’t have come anywhere near as close to sullying the reputations “enjoyed” by politicians as they did with this ludicrous pensions for parliamentarians stunt.
First, they attract raspberries from far and wide by letting it be known that while Johanna Q Citizen can make do with her national insurance pension, and say “thank you kind sir” while she’s doing that, they, our Honourable Representatives, would be getting a much more lucrative deal.
Then, when the splutter of raspberries got to be too much for even your common or garden politician to endure – and no doubt having done some electoral arithmetic – first the PN and then, hot on their heels, the PL came over all “we’re here to serve” (rather than self-serve , I suppose) and kicked the stupid idea into touch.
I mean really, does even one of them have even the slightest inkling of how opportunistic and grubby the whole thing looked? It’s so obvious that they had no clue – or didn’t care – how insensitive the measure was in the first place that likewise they are so out of touch that they think we’re going to thank them now.
And before PD run away with the idea that they’re some sort of simpering virgin in the middle of this slavering hedonism, note has been taken of their shabby treatment of the Awturi group, attributing partisan motives to them because they dared criticise the saintly ones.
And note has been taken as well of their cynical grab for credit when they tried to give the impression that it was their plucky little rump party that was instrumental in the moronic measure being deep-sixed.
It was the stark fact that both the big parties woke up to the knowledge that they both stood to lose that did that.