What seems to link together three totally unrelated issues, Gonzi, the euro and the Syrian tragedy, is that in all cases we are talking of unfinished business

Last Saturday’s farce at the PN HQ merely served to show how hollow Gonzi’s claim is that the PN is one family now. This surely does not apply to his parliamentary group where his main problems were always embedded and ingrained. If anything, Saturday’s ‘teatrin’ simply made a bad situation look and come across as even worse. In sharp contrast with the Australians who put their leadership problems to the test within one week at a parliamentary group level, the ball is now definitely once again in Gonzi’s court.

If Gonzi is so self satisfied we now expect him to take up the PL challenge to bring a sense of normality back to Parliament’s life with immediate effect, by bringing up all pending agenda items without fail; by refraining from resorting to any more parallel agenda shifting as well as by doing away once and for all with his knack for holding back from allowing crucial and sensitive parliamentary votes to be taken when they should fall due. We equally expect him to tackle any Opposition private motions – particularly on Justice Affairs – without any foot dragging.

The fact that two prominent Nationalist backbenchers (a former minister and a popular MP who was returned from two districts) together with a former key minister and contender for the leadership race did not even bother to collect their voting documents for last Saturday’s leadership vote at the PN’s Dar Ċentrali, reinforces my long-held view that Saturday’s one-horse race merely served to further highlight and reinforce the long evident cracks within the PN’s parliamentary group. Adding to this the fact that other MPs have been giving vent to their dissent publicly without much restraint, shows that last weekend’s event offers little solace to a beleaguered Prime Minister.

Proof of this was evidenced by the fact that rather than submitting himself to a secret vote within the parliamentary group Gonzi chose the easiest way out – by seeking the support of his delegates, a number of whom are reported to have been pushed forward in past months with the support and encouragement of the PN central office.

In this day and age when the democratic rules of the game are prevailing elsewhere, and the winds of change were meant to be sweeping even across the Arab world, Gonzi’s attempts to emulate a Chavez-Mubarak-Ben Ali type of internal election must offer him little comfort.

All this merely goes to prove that instead of a final resolution of the conflict within the PN parliamentary group’s ranks, Gonzi has not only ended up with even more egg on his face, but he has also proved something long known. That at day’s end he remains lumped with still much unfinished business.

Sunday’s apologetic speech was pathetic and four years too late. It revealed a PM who decided to get real only in the run-up days to the general elections when local elections are round the corner.

It suddenly dawned on GonziPN that:

• The government must be more sensitive to the people’s everyday realities;

• Gonzi himself came to realise this these last four week!;

• One had to understand the impact of gas prices in a cold winter;

• One needed to listen to complaints about medicines out of stock;

• It was bad to have precarious jobs;

• Arrogance within government departments needed to be addressed;

But the best is still to come:

• The PN would not promise what could not be delivered;

• Gonzi wanted a government which sought out and fought corruption.

Which begs the question… where was he hiding these last four years?

This meanwhile brings us to the euro.

What might look like a bailout for Greece has been perceived by many commentators, particularly on the other side of the Atlantic, as just an illusion, particularly since rather than permanently solving the crisis, reports indicate that ‘worries persist that a debt disaster on the Continent has been merely delayed’.

If the market has relied on short-term psychology, the same can be said for the gurus down at the PN headquarters.

While the PN seems eager to avoid any strong measures within its own parliamentary group, European officials seem to want to avoid similar measures as being applied to Greece for other countries.

As in the case of the euro – with Lawrence Gonzi in terms of a would-be permanent solution to his problems – no one except his inner clan think that he is anywhere near the endgame.

As for the euro itself, someone remarked last week in the British tabloids – only optimists or eurocrats believe the euro crisis is resolved. The same goes for GonziPN!

Which brings us to Syria.

I am in no way implying that Gonzi has blood on his hands as Assad does and no parallels are meant to be drawn with the local scenario.

But even in this case we have a typical, classical example of unfinished business.

While until recently everyone was thinking in terms of a Syrian-Hamas-Hezbollah axis, only last weekend we came to learn that the Hamas Prime Minister was backing the Syrian protests against Assad.

Whether the Hamas drift away from its long-term backers in Iran and Syria is purely tactical or not is not for me to tell at this stage. But as analysts in the pro-Tory media have been prompt to point out, Syria’s crisis has led the West to some very strange bedfellows.

The Damascus bombings, which many thought were the work of the Assad regime, were according to the Director of US National Intelligence something with all the earmarks of an al-Qaeda attack. While other similar sources have claimed that they believe that al-Qaeda has been extending its reach into Syria thus rendering this terrorist movement by default into a Western ally in their desire to overturn the Syrian government.

This should in no way be interpreted as a defence of the atrocious Assad regime which warrants our total condemnation for its merciless and bloody actions.

But certain conclusions cannot but be drawn, particularly when it is common knowledge that many Western sources would understandably like to undermine Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in the Lebanon.

It was also recently pointed out that some Western countries and the mentioned terror group have also come to share the same hostility towards the Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki and for very much the same reason – particularly since they both think and even agree that he takes his orders from Tehran.

The same way that we will be mistaken to fall into the most obvious of pitfalls by wilfully simplifying complex foreign policy decisions, I firmly believe that Gonzi has been applying the wrong medicine to try and address a malaise that has long spread right across the body politic of his party structures.

Particularly at a parliamentary group level.