Regardless of what may be decided in Parliament later this week as well as irrespective of what the House Business Committee may have decided yesterday there is one certainty
That even more so in the light of the recent Standard & Poor’s downgrade and further developments likely to come about, we as Maltese need stability. And it is a given that the GonziPN regime is not providing it. Very little tears will be shed – except by the fat cats and the party rank and file – were the GonziPN regime to meet a premature death.
For various long evident reasons.
That any injuries sustained were self-inflicted. That the Franco Debono trauma was just a symptom and not a cause. And that this saga came about as a net result of the inappropriate, ineffective and unprofessional manner in which GonziPN and his clan tried to run roughshod over any dissidents – MPs in particular – notwithstanding the fact that since 2008 they have been governing with less than a single seat quota.
The more the electoral strategy team members claimed that an election now might be damaging to the country because the PN – correctly or not – risked suffering a crushing defeat, the more it became evident that all along, the Nationalist government’s sole interest was that of putting the party interests first, way ahead of the national interest.
Judging by the questions posed by government-leaning TV anchormen on state television who depend heavily on government hand-outs for their communications companies and near monopolistic contracts on state broadcasting, one could easily foretell what the Nationalist spin was likely to be.
Spin Number One. That the PL took its time before committing itself to a vote of no-confidence in government because it was ill-prepared to govern as well as for any eventual campaign proper.
Spin Number Two. (To be set off in case a Vote of No-Confidence Motion was tabled – as it has effectively been since then) – That the PL is power hungry and that in its eagerness to assume the reins of government it will not care two hoots about damaging the economy further, sacrificing foreign investment and running the risk of seeing the country lose thousands of jobs.
One important point that government propagandists and apologists seem to have missed is that made by various constituted bodies, none of which happen to be PL cheer leaders.
That the political crisis has already gone on far too long, and that the protracted manner in which uncertainty has been allowed to fester further is doing the Maltese economy considerable further damage.
The only two people who predictably came out hollering against an early election were – as expected – former UĦM General Secretary Gejtu Vella who is being talked of as a potential PN electoral candidate, and Vince Farrugia, the Director General of the GRTU, a defeated Nationalist candidate for the post of MEP and who has since then apparently morphed into an apparent PN public groupie.
The proposed Gonzi Qatar/Tunisia visit was the ultimate in political irresponsibility in terms of political timing, even more so when other Cabinet ministers were long known to have cancelled trips abroad – in one particular case a China visit linked to renewable energy projects, which ended up with the Minister concerned campaigning in Kappara instead.
Had Gonzi been the serious politician that he has failed to be during this particular legislature, he would have promptly cancelled such a visit the moment his own self-brewed political crisis surfaced. The same way that he had responsibly cancelled his long planned Israeli visit the moment the Libyan crisis had come to the boil. From information I have, even other Nationalist MPs have been long told to cancel their own travel plans in the forthcoming days.
The feeble attempts to make the point that the motion of no-confidence tabled by the PN went unsigned by Joseph Muscat in the eventuality that he would not like to be associated with it directly, in case it was defeated in the House, was pathetic to put it mildly.
Even before the PL actually tabled such a motion and resolution, Muscat had long made it known that he was prepared to shoulder full political responsibility for any such actions on the PL’s part as well as that Labour MPs had long given Muscat ‘full powers’ to decide Labour’s next moves.
This is due to the fact that although we have always worked as a team during this legislature, meeting every Monday, regardless of any national agenda items at the fore or not, the Nationalist Party’s parliamentary group first spent months on end not meeting at all. Then it started meeting as a fire-fighting exercise to try and quell the rebellion in its own ranks. In more recent weeks it has been meeting solely to try and tackle – hopefully in advance – the outcome of the various hot potatoes that have ended on their laps.
But then Gonzi’s worst failing is that he is such an unrepentant politician. Months after allowing his coterie to attack Franco Debono, the PM only last Sunday tried to con us into believing that he had genuinely called on his supporters to be calm and to stop any personal attacks against those who might disagree with them! To call this rich is a gross understatement.
Alas, Gonzi is not managing to fool anybody anymore. Former Minister Michael Falzon hit the nail on the head when he wrote last Sunday that Gonzi’s style of leadership is the problem not Franco Debono.
That three veteran stalwarts have been reportedly asked to take over the Nationalist campaign goes to prove that in spite of all the talk of confidence in their new team and their by now not so new general secretary, the PN knows full well that they can ill afford to go to the polls by relying on their present team of party officials and self-appointed strategists.
This is unfortunately the same weakness that risks spelling the downfall of GonziPN even at an administrative level at Castille. The kind of people he has surrounded himself with in the corridors of power at the Office of the Prime Minister are reported to be people better known for their arrogance and lust for power rather than for their communication skills and crisis management capabilities.
Irrespective of whether GonziPN will fall or not as a regime later this week, the government will surely continue to earn public disdain and condemnation for the pathetic manner in which it failed – until it had no option left – to take any concrete measures to put the people and businesses’ minds at rest in an attempt to help restore stability to the country when it needed it most.
When Joseph Muscat wrote to Mr Speaker to convene Parliament at the earliest possible the moment it became evident that government had already virtually lost its majority of seats to govern (always judging by public statements made then), the Speaker had decided not to do so.
But in all fairness to the Speaker he did so on one understanding – that discussion of the matter would not be delayed further and that it would take place as soon as Parliament reconvenes in two days’ time.
An easier and messier option might have been to let the GonziPN government implode but in doing so the PL would have been simply going against the grain of the national interest by allowing government to commit political harakiri all in good time.
As I write this article it continues to remain evident that the PM does not command a majority of the House.
Only a quickly taken vote – without the need for pointless never-ending speeches way beyond the minimum of what is decently expected in such abnormal circumstances – can resolve that issue.
This is something that none of the Galea Curmis and Gordon Pisanis at the OPM can put proper. For the same reason that I consider the GonziPN carrot and stick approach towards Franco Debono to verge on the ridiculous.
The same way that it is mistaken of Gonzi to try and resolve such a matter within his own party circles.
When the crisis is one of a parliamentary dimension, it can only be resolved in the House itself.
If Gonzi genuinely believed that our ‘guillotine’ motion was undemocratic, I dread to imagine how one could best describe his own irresponsible foot dragging to cling on to power – purely to safeguard the Nationalist Party’s interest and those of the mega contractors who have done more than drip feed them in past years.
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Leo Brincat is the Shadow Minister for the Environment, Sustainable Development & Climate Change