I can’t imagine that Mark Camilleri’s opinions have the gravity to reroute the river of history inside the Labour Party. So I’ll take these remarks he made recently about pressure on Joseph Muscat to fire Keith Schembri to reflect what he imagines happened, rather than what really happened.
But it’s interesting that Mark Camilleri says he would have continued to support Joseph Muscat if he had fired Keith Schembri when he knew Joseph Muscat must have been involved in the same corruption that Keith Schembri was embroiled in.
The logic, such as it is, is baffling.
It is the idea that the interests of the party must overcome individual misgivings taken to an extreme.
Mark Camilleri says Joseph Muscat is a sociopath, maybe a psychopath, because he is unable to empathise and see what he’s doing as wrong. I don’t disagree with that assessment.
But the detachment is again staggering. Mark Camilleri says, without a smidgen of guilt, that he would have supported Joseph Muscat (on certain conditions) even knowing that he was corrupt. Does not that too depend on a callous ability to choose to do the wrong thing?
Speaking of baffling logic. Bernard Grech has just endorsed Adrian Delia as a candidate for the next general elections. “If I had a problem with him, he wouldn’t be running.” Bernard Grech can’t very well say “I’d rather he didn’t run but I’m powerless to stop him. I must now cross my finger and hope his constituents have the good sense to reject him.”
Far be it from me to presume to know what Bernard Grech is thinking when he’s saying something else. But wouldn’t we like to think that someone who wants to be prime minister is not such a poor judge of character as to think Adrian Delia is a suitable election candidate?
The PN leader has been saying these last few weeks that he would be taking “tough decisions” if incumbent MPs he does not wish in the next Parliament do not quit the ticket of their own accord. Presumably, “tough decisions” means blocking their candidature because he has a problem with it.
I look at the line-up of MPs and I share the desire for fresh faces. But the incumbent MPs who will be prevented from running will have failed a test that Adrian Delia passed. They will wonder, probably around, what they’ve done to deserve it and how Adrian Delia could have been a role model they should have imitated to save their political skins.
Someone once said that politics is the art of the possible. It is a justification of cynicism and of decisions and actions taken by political winners that the rest of us would baulk at taking. But when so little else is possible, what you’re left with is Joseph Muscat and Adrian Delia.