Will he be kept in the closet forever?

Muammar, d'you know of any good hiding places?

Alex Sciberras Trigona, the PL's international secretary, has been incommunicado since the Libyan revolution started in February. 

As far as I know, the only public sighting of the man was when the PL invited members of the Muslim community to celebrate iftar, the end of Ramadan. On that occasion he looked uncomfortable, struggling to hide his tall stature from the TV cameras.

Apart from being out of physical circulation, AST no longer expresses a view on any international matter as far as I can tell. He does not even sign the party press releases concerning his neck of the woods. He has become the antithesis of the observation that unless a politician see his picture in the newspaper he starts to doubt his existence.

Clearly, the Partit Laburista leadership has painted itself into a corner. On the one hand, it is too late to acknowledge that it was a mistake to turn Duminku Mintoff's 1980's flunkie into one of Joseph Muscat's progressivi u moderati. At the same time, as Gaddafi's dictatorship draws its last foul breath in Bani Walid and Sirte, it is politically suicidal for the PL to promote AST, a Gaddafi groupie for three decades, as its poster boy to the international community.

How will the PL extricate itself from this corner? Will AST be kept in the closet forever? Till the election? If he's let out at some point, isn't it inevitable that some journalist will ask him the Gaddafi questions that the closet door had been protecting him from? 

Note: Your comments are most welcome. Ideally, you'd sign with your real name. But if you choose to remain anonymous, please use a pseudonym and stick to it. This will avoid the confusion caused when different people sign 'Anonymous'.