Daphne Caruana Galizia

The prime minister quite obviously thinks that the most suitable attitude to adopt, as his government is mired in a slew of bad news concerning its roadmap, is a positive one.

Never has he shimmered and smiled quite as determinedly as he has been doing these last few weeks, even as it became indisputable fact (failing the appearance of a deus ex machina in the form of an inflatable one, provided by some obscure friends of the erstwhile European Commission for Health) that there is going to be no power station in March, and quite possibly by no March after that either.

The prime minister positive demeanour and facial expressions are, it goes without saying, manufactured. Only somebody with Asperger's Syndrome would be unable to detect that. By now, even the most gullible of electors busy giving him the benefit of the doubt so far, can see that. And even his most fervent and passionate supporters have begun to worry that the prime minister does not know what he is doing - on this score, at least. His attempts at a grave facial expression are manufactured too, and are more unconvincing than all that plastic radiant positivity, but still they would be far more appropriate in circumstances like these. At least we would know that he is aware the situation calls for concern. It is far too serious to merely put a bright face on it hoping to encourage us to do likewise and reassure us that he and his men know what they are doing. "The prime minister and Konrad Mizzi are smiling and they're not looking worried, therefore there is nothing to worry about. Let's smile too and be positive." But that's not how it works, is it? We look at them smiling and behaving all devil-may-care, and instead of not worrying at all, we worry even more as the realisation dawns that what we are looking at is highly irresponsible behaviour by those who are in charge of the country and of the economy in which we operate and by which we live.

At some point, the Energy Mizzi slipped off to China, a visit which became public only when parliament opened and he wasn't there, and the press began to ask questions. He had packed his begging-bowl - Maltese government minister goes to China asking for money, a story as old as the 1970s - and was working it hard when the press rang him. Shanghai Electric Power, which is not a private company but a state-owned corporation, is refusing to come up with the €320 million investment in Enemalta which our clairvoyant government had been counting on as a done deal. Chickens before they're hatched, and all that - so now it's panic stations.

You can't blame Shanghai Power Electric or China: this is strictly business in their eyes, but our prime minister has been thinking of it, Mintoff-style, as Chinese charity for its little friend in the Mediterranean. I have in mind an interview he gave not so long ago in which he beamed with wonder and delight - and this time, the expression was not manufactured - while speaking of magnificently enormous China's inexplicable feelings of friendship for this tiny brace of islands in the Mediterranean. Surely it isn't like Joseph Muscat to be so very naive.

The Chinese want to know the very things we in the press have wanted to know for some time now - roughly a year at least, when the news broke that China will be ploughing that much money into Enemalta and converting to gas operation the last power station that was built here. The main issue is: exactly how will things work out with the competition? And the competition, of course, is the Electrogas power-station-in-the-sky. For too many people haven't noticed what should have been obvious: that the Electrogas power station, which has yet to materialise, will be in direct competition with the Chinese-Maltese power station. Whose electricity will the Maltese public buy, and via which vehicle?

No doubt, this key issue is one of the main things holding up the coming together of the Electrogas project. They're not going to take one step further before their captive market is guaranteed by the Maltese government. We have to wonder, at this stage, whether things ground to a halt with them when they heard the news that the government was also dealing with China and that China would be buying into Enemalta and ploughing hundreds of millions of euros into that failing corporation. I would not be in the least bit surprised to discover that those involved in Electrogas found out about the government's Chinese negotiations when we did.