THE First Minister will be in Aberdeen today - an event here, a cabinet meeting there, but will he come to the defence of his beleaguered Justice Minister any time soon? He must know that, for a week, Kenny MacAskill has been hung out to dry, facing a decision as tough as any politician will ever make. But still Mr Salmond does not appear. Instead he attends essentially side-shows.
There is a sense that this is the way of this government. John Swinney has batted alone during the tough campaign against local government and in justifying the lack of progress on the Scottish Futures Trust. Nicola Sturgeon is a superb operator, and Salmond knows it, but he often leaves her out at the furthest point.
The Megrahi affair is the biggest tsunami to hit the Scottish Government in its young life, with an international impact which could sweep away belief in our legal system, and with that a plank of the whole case for independence.
It would have been good to see Mr Salmond stepping out in defence of the impossible decision Mr MacAskill faces, but it is not now the style of the FM. The call Mr MacAskill is pondering is the toughest of his career. For that matter, it is the toughest most politicians will face: should he show compassion to the biggest convicted mass murderer in British criminal history?
His decision has not been made any easier by the leak that prompted days of media speculation, and it is a decision he has been left to make alone, one that has no upside politically but a very big downside in the court of public and international opinion.
When you think back to the original Deal in the Desert over prisoner transfers struck between Tony Blair and Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi in June 2007, there was a ferocious response from Mr Salmond as he complained bitterly about the position of the Scottish Government and its distinctive legal system being usurped. In the past week, the First Minister has not exactly rushed to the support of his Justice Secretary, even if reports of a row last Friday are wide of the mark.
While there are technical reasons why Mr MacAskill has to make this decision alone, it still seems odd not to see Mr Salmond weighing in. Normally there is no show without Punch. He has sent a round-robin letter to UN member states seeking support for Scotland banning Trident and was quick to boast a meeting with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as a coup when it suited him. Not now, however.
The past week has been a media storm for the SNP administration which has tested its usually sure-footed handling of events. One question worth asking is: will there have been a clinking of sherry glasses in Whitehall as the media frenzy erupted?
The leak last week made the decision for Mr MacAskill, already a tough one, nigh-on impossible because it cranked up the external pressure. On cue, the day after the morning headlines, Mr MacAskill picked up his phone to hear the outraged tones of Mrs Clinton.
It was first reported by a BBC Scotland journalist based in London last Wednesday that Mr MacAskill would free Megrahi this week. The Scottish Government was thrown on to the back foot because no announcement of such a time scale was planned.
This matters because political opponents have been given extra days to marshal orchestrated attacks on the Justice Secretary on the basis that he is damned whichever way he calls the decision, and at the same time it has made it increasingly unlikely that he could opt for no release at all.
The Scottish Government looks like it might end up with a deeply unsatisfactory outcome. Ministers wanted the Megrahi appeal to go ahead, but the prisoner transfer agreement put pressure on the defence to drop it. It is believed Mr MacAskill prefers the route of compassionate release on grounds of imminent death, leaving the appeal to go ahead.
It looks like the Foreign Office will get its way. Megrahi's appeal will be dropped, soon he will be sent home to Libya to die and, after that, we will be no nearer knowing the truth of Lockerbie and the Scottish legal system will not have been purged of this affair.
