Ryan Callus and the PN | Luciano Busuttil

Nationalist Member of Parliament Ryan Callus called the press twice in a row in less than a week. He did so to take the government to task for diverting EU funds, to the tune of €90 million, from electric buses to grants for individuals who want to buy an electric car.

At the first press conference he cried foul. At the second press conference he said that the government’s decision would create further traffic on our roads.

It was towards the end of the second press conference, flanked by PN MPs Mark Anthony Sammut and Eve Borg Bonello that Ryan Callus was asked whether he ever availed himself of government grants to purchase an electric vehicle.

An embarrassed Callus replied in the affirmative. He then tried to wriggle himself out from the tight corner he painted himself in by arguing that as a citizen he had every right to do so. Of course, he does, but the problem with Callus is that as far as he was concerned, he went along and bought an electric vehicle, however he finds objection with others to do so – because his fallacious argument is that by giving more grants people will purchase more electric vehicles and therefore more traffic on our roads.

In a nutshell, Callus finds no objection to availing himself of the government grants but does if you do.

Thousands of people have availed and continue to avail themselves of government grants to purchase electric vehicles. It is a no-brainer that electric vehicles pollute less and therefore their purchase should be encouraged. Of course, each purchase is a new car on our roads but usually people buy a new car when their old one no longer suffices. It often happens that people who purchase new cars and avail themselves of government schemes destroy their old vehicles since schemes exist for that too.

Ryan Callus’ double standards exemplifies all that is wrong with the Nationalist Party. They have benchmarks, and expectations, as we all do, but they differ according to partisan politics. So engrossed was he in getting some media exposure, which he seeks frequently and desperately, that he painted himself into a corner and made a mess of a press conference that shouldn’t have been called in the first place. His colleagues, Sammut and Borg Bonello, looked in amusement barely able to hide their embarrassment.

Callus’s double standards were unmasked at that press event, exposing the follow-my-words-but-not-my-actions behaviour deeply ingrained within the Nationalist Party.

A few days before Callus' embarrassing press event, The Institute of Maltese Journalists urged the police to act after a man was filmed bodychecking a ONE journalist as he questioned a Nationalist MP during a protest called by the Nationalist Party. The IĠM condemned the incident and noted that it was the second incident involving journalists and the PN flagged it in the past weeks. The PN did not even bother to issue an apology to the ONE news journalists and this coming from a party that misses no occasion to speak about the importance of media freedom and the need to let journalists carry out their work freely and unhindered. Then it bullies journalists at its events.

What’s more; when a former PN MP was recently taken to Court for allegedly filming, illegally, Prime Minister Robert Abela and Justice Minister Jonathan Attard at the law courts, the Nationalist Party rushed to defend him. When Labour MPs or people affiliated to the Labour Party are involved, the PN calls for their immediate resignation and tarnishes their reputation fiercely even though everyone is presumed innocent until proven guilty – but not for the PN, for if you happen to be part of their exclusive clique, that does not apply to you.

The same Nationalist Party that calls for a ‘Malta Zaghzugha’ (Youthful Malta), through its extremist fringe group Repubblika, requests criminal charges against Glenn Micallef, Malta’s EU Commissioner and the youngest commissioner in Ursula Von der Leyen cabinet.

Neither does the PN object or carry internal investigations when serious allegations are made that some of the MPs, employed within the public sector, rarely if ever show up for work. The PN defends them and says that they are being victimised.

They speak about rule of law and good governance every day and issue press statements to that effect in heaps, but where it is concerned, rule of law and good governance are conveniently tossed aside.