2013: was it really the year of Malta Taghna Lkoll?

IN TODAY'S MALTATODAY, we look back at 2013 and the year of 'Malta Taghna Lkoll' - or was this meritocracy slogan put paid by Labour's appointments of volunteers and campaigners and other party men and women to the country's top ranks?

Joseph Muscat, the young prime minister who clinched the reins power in a spectacular landslide victory in 2013, has been keen not to lose his reformist sheen. He stood up as a the principled emancipator piloting legislation that will give same sex-couples the same rights as married heterosexuals, including that of adopting children. But he also gave us a taste of a very different kind of leadership: a hawkish strongman who contemplated pushing back a group of migrants to war-torn Libya days after inviting European Commissioner Cecilia Malmström to take some of the migrants in Malta, to her home country Sweden.

Only a few months after calling on Europe to "wake up and smell the coffee" on Malta's challenge to cope with migratory influx during summer - the numbers of which remain a far cry from those that Spain, Greece, Italy and even Sweden itself cope with - Muscat find himself marketing the Individual Investor Programme in Miami, offering a fast-tracked Maltese citizenship and EU passport to anyone willing to pay €650,0000. Muscat had placed Malta under the international spotlight, for reasons that will have other countries watching us carefully, while some tut-tutting at the new prime minister's guile.

And when he turned meritocracy into an electoral battlecry, in which he used the Nationalists' shoddy 'evil clique' image to his benefit, it was his government that eventually staffed numerous boards with Labour candidates, supporters and campaign volunteers, while balancing this out with a few meritocratic appointments, like that of veteran journalist Reno Bugeja as PBS head of news.

Ever conscious of the power of political theatre and symbolism, he was magnanimous enough to appoint one of Labour's pre-election pet hates: Lou Bondì on a board responsible for celebrating Malta's 50^th anniversary of its Independence, effectively turning the self-serving media merchant into a walking advert for Tagħna Lkoll. 

Excelling in balancing acts, his government clamped down on the previously untouchable Charles Polidano, while changing the goalposts in favour of land speculation through policies relaxing building heights and allowing even more development in the countryside. 

And in yet another gesture of political theatre his government awarded environmental crusader Astrid Vella a national honour on Republic Day, just a week after she launched the first national protest against his government's tottering environmental record.

But even this strategy of grand gestures can backfire, as demonstrated by author Alex Vella Gera's refusal to play the game when he refused a national honour on Republic Day that was originally meant to underline Labour's liberal credentials.