Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1302895
10 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 25 OCTOBER 2020 Raphael Vassallo OPINION Robert Abela is always right, and his critics are always wrong. Any questions? UP to a point, I can more or less understand the Prime Minis- ter's frustration. I know, from my own personal experience, that 'always being right about absolutely everything' can get a little tiring in the long run…. es- pecially when you are constant- ly contradicted by lesser mor- tals who always claim to know better than you (which is par- ticularly annoying when they also happen to be world experts in their respective field: but one step at a time…) This is, in fact, why I occasion- ally insert deliberate 'mistakes' into these articles: you know, just to create the false impres- sion that I'm just another human being like everybody else… and therefore liable to sometimes getting things, um, WRONG. Last week, for instance, I went out of my way to 'erroneously' suggest that the Nationalist Party had three representatives in the European Parliament, instead of only two. And I'm pleased to report that a few readers – in- cluding at least one Labour MEP – were alert enough to almost immediately identify the 'mis- take', and contact me to point it out (little realising, of course, that it was all part of a stratagem to disguise my Divine Infallibil- ity, and thereby come across as slightly less of a smart-arse than usual.) So what can I say, folks? Five points to Griffindor. Next time, I'll try and make my deliber- ate 'mistakes' a little harder to spot…. But in any case: this innate in- fallibility of mine also places me in an ideal position to recognise the same quality in others. Like Robert Abela, for instance… ar- guably the only other human being on this planet (apart from myself, Sir David Attenborough, and maybe Pope Francis) who is utterly incapable of making any form of mistake, under any cir- cumstance whatsoever. And if you won't take my own word for it – perhaps because you think it's another of my in- tentional inaccuracies – well… you can always take his. And I really do mean 'always', by the way. After all, it's a point he's been consistently making for al- most a whole year now: as long as he's been Prime Minister, in fact. Each and every single time Robert Abela is in any way criti- cised – be it over his (utterly dis- astrous) handling of the COV- ID-19 crisis; or his stance on immigration; or his decision to hand over large tracts of public land to hunters, etc; you can rest assured that his reaction will be to simply dig his heels and insist – over and over again – that he is right, while all the naysayers are wrong. And yes, I know what you're probably thinking: but isn't that just as true of all Malta's past Prime Ministers (and Cabinet ministers… and MPs… and, indeed, politicians in general: not just in Malta, but the world over)? Yes, it probably is: but with a significant difference. For unlike any of his predecessors, or con- temporary international equiv- alents… Robert Abela really is 'always right about absolutely everything'; just as his critics re- ally are always wrong to criticize him. And this is not merely my own opinion (in which case – be- ing infallible, and all – I could almost stop right here); it is al- so an undeniable, self-evident and perfectly demonstrable TRUTH… so demonstrable, in fact, that I shall now proceed to demonstrate its veracity, right before your very eyes. Any number of specific exam- ples would suffice, but I'll go with the most recent. A couple of days ago, the Malta Institute of Journalists came out with a statement lambasting the Prime Minister's handling of a press conference: specifically, on the grounds that it disregarded all the government's recent regula- tions to slow down the spread of COVID-19… including the pro- viso about maintaining "a min- imum distance of two metres between individuals". Now: on a purely factual (and therefore entirely unimportant) level, the IGM was quite correct in its assertion: and this can very easily be verified, just by watch- ing the video accompanying the news report. In that footage – but more clearly, in the photograph – you will see that the Prime Minister is at the centre of a small crowd of around eight or nine individu- als… all jostling to get as close to him as physically possible (pre- sumably to show up in all the press photographs: more proof, if any were needed, that an early election really is on the cards…) As a result, the physical dis- tance between Robert Abela and, say, Transport Minister Ian Borg, couldn't have been much more than two millimetres: in other words, around a thousand times less than the minimum re- quired by law. Yet what was Robert Abela's reaction, when confronted by such unequivocal, incontro- vertible proof of that his own behaviour had openly flouted the newly-introduced health and safety regulations? Why, it was the same as his reaction to all previous criticism: he simply denied that the wrongdoing took place at all; and – true to type – he also blamed the journalists for breaching the same regula- tions he was accused of flouting himself. And just to dispel any further doubt as to this point, these were the exact words: "although the government gave directions on the advice of the health author- ities, it was the responsibility of individuals to take care of them- selves and others. In this case, it was journalists who should keep a distance…" OK, at this point you may well be thinking: hang on a second there. Didn't you just tell us that the Prime Minister was right, and the IĠM wrong? And aren't you now making the clean oppo- site argument…i.e., that Abela was the one at fault, and not the journalists who attended that approach? Well… yes; and no. For you see, there is more to 'being right' than merely stating things that are, in themselves, factually correct; and there is certainly a whole lot more to 'being right' than occupying the moral high ground. The IĠM may well have hit the