Robert Abela’s decision to hand the Tourism Ministry to Ian Borg rather than use the occasion to promote one of his MPs seems quite telling.

These are all the MPs who were overlooked for promotion, excluding Chris Fearne, who resigned as Health Minister due to an ongoing court case, Edward Zammit Lewis, who has been nominated as an EU judge, and Randolph Debattista, who is set to take on the role of Malta’s ambassador to Geneva.

Carmelo Abela, Chris Agius, Rosianne Cutajar, Deo Debattista, Aaron Farrugia, and Alex Muscat all have prior Cabinet experience.

Although Abela recently reintroduced Cutajar into the PL and praised Carmelo Abela for winning a libel case against Jason Azzopardi over the HSBC heist allegations, it seems he doesn’t yet trust either of them enough to be part of his Cabinet.

Seven other MPs have also been completely overlooked; these are Ray Abela, Abigail Camilleri, Katya De Giovanni, Cressida Galea, Davina Sammut Hili, Amanda Spiteri Grech, and Romilda Zarb.

Although none of them have Cabinet experience and are all serving in their first legislature, Abela has previously shown he is ready to give inexperienced politicians a chance.

For example, parliamentary secretaries Rebecca Buttigieg, Omar Farrugia and Alicia Bugeja Said are all newcomers to the political arena.

However, in this case, the Prime Minister chose to hand Clayton Bartolo’s Tourism Ministry to Ian Borg, who already had several responsibilities as deputy Prime Minister, Foreign Affairs Minister, and chair-in-office of the OSCE.

The question is whether Abela sees some kind of advantage in shrinking his Cabinet or whether he simply doesn’t trust the remaining MPs at his disposal enough.

Should any of these MPs have been promoted to Cabinet?