All those familiar with US military jargon very well know what the acronym ‘SNAFU’ stands for. It was first developed during World War II in cases when a bad situation becomes even worse almost as a matter of routine

Lawrence Gonzi has brought the word ‘SNAFU’ bang up to date by developing a penchant for various SNAFUs through his peculiar way of doing politics.

Without in any way trying to defend the dissident elements in his parliamentary group (for whom please note I am using the plural) it is by now common knowledge that GonziPN is the root cause of the symptoms we have all been gossiping and speculating about in the past months, weeks and days. If not also hours too.

It must be somewhat rich for the PN to accuse the PL of being opportunistic when they had no qualms about voting against an innocuous law on tourism in 1998 which they had earlier supported in a consensual manner at an earlier stage.

But even were this not to be the case, while one can understand that governments might try to dismiss any Opposition party that carries out its constitutional role of keeping any ministerial performance in check by labelling it as opportunistic and negative, no one can accuse certain newspapers without much love for the PL as harbouring the same lust for power that the parties in government tend to accuse the Opposition parties of.

In less than three days we had two very telling editorials in The Times newspapers which spoke clearly the kind of language that GonziPN has been avoiding to use, as a result of his ever growing and intensifying sense of self-denial.

On Thursday 31 May the PM was warned very clearly that it should be clear to him by now that there is no way out. And that even if the government may again win the confidence vote in the near future, the only real way out is an election.

Come the following Sunday – two days ago – the sister publication of the same newspaper concluded editorially that not only has Lawrence Gonzi been unable to decide how to deal with his own dissident MPs by shifting from appeasement to belligerence then appeasement again that betrayed an inherent leadership weakness, it reminded us of something other editorialists shirk from commenting about.

Primarily that:

“We have a Parliament that for all intents and purposes has barely passed any legislation for half a year and a national agenda perpetually dictated by the shenanigans taking place within the Nationalist Party. Only to add that – this cannot and must not go on, or the PM himself will be held personally responsible for doing harm to the country.”

Were all this solely attributable to Lawrence Gonzi’s political weakness it could have been understandable without necessarily being considered acceptable.

But even worse such a streak of weakness that stretched the PM’s credibility further was motivated by one single objective.

His single-minded pursuit to cling on to power at all costs, even at the expense of perpetrating political and economic uncertainty.

The argument that this government has a mandate to run the whole full five-year course, also applied to the short-lived PL administration of 96-98.

But then mandates and actual terms of office are not one and the same thing.

The same way as one cannot by any stretch of the imagination consider any moves – opportunistic or not – to censure any minister’s performance in office as being an act of immorality, viciousness, callousness, cold-blooded ruthlessness, and also an attack of integrity when this was never the issue at stake.

A friend of mine who lives away from the Maltese Islands and is in my opinion far more inclined to vote for the Tories rather than Labour in the UK simply could not fathom out this warped thinking within PN party ranks.

What I found even worse and totally unacceptable was the fact that even in their reaction to the negative vote in Parliament – or rather in the run-up to the vote proper – the Nationalist MPs split themselves into at least three different camps.

On one hand we had PN MPs urging the recently ditched minister to cling on to his portfolio, as well as for their government to merely note any possible negative result and move on to a business-as-usual approach.

The second group went to the other extreme by claiming that we were subjecting the minister in question to psychological harm, damage and violence while setting out to ruin his family simply because we had subjected him to an administrative vote of censure.

In sharp contrast with all this, we then also had the third faction within the same Parliamentary Group.

This lot argued that by their benchmarks and standards, a vote of no confidence in any Cabinet minister was to be interpreted as a vote of no confidence in the whole government.

As if this was not baffling enough only last Sunday on the eve of what could turn out to be a crucial vote of confidence in Parliament even if the net result will most likely prove to be as exciting as a damp squib, we had none other than the Prime Minister himself hinting in a most resonant manner that from now on he will not accept any negative votes or abstentions on any crucial votes.

Joseph Muscat was smart enough to remind the Santa Luċija crowd of this self-imposed benchmark by the Prime Minister which might actually come to haunt him in the coming days.

Particularly since some of his restless backbenchers and parliamentary assistants have been using the most belligerent language imaginable against their own colleagues by claiming that one should close the door and throw away the keys with certain dissident MPs while another prominent member of the same group argued that the time of bridge building is over since a particular MP has burnt all bridges with his own party.

Whether we are in for any surprises or not I have no idea at all.

But through his actions, words and mannerisms the Prime Minister is only fuelling uncertainty further.

It was already a mistake of past governments to rely on constitutional rights while ignoring certain political considerations.

GonziPN have evidently not learnt their lesson yet. Or at all.

It seems that their sole interest is the party’s interest.

That of closing any existing gaps in the polls out of sheer political expediency.

By the time of writing the outcome of yesterday’s vote will be common knowledge by now.

I am sure that whichever way it goes it will prove a point Dr Mario de Marco tried to make – even though arguing in a totally different manner – when he recently spoke of the banalisation of democracy in another newspaper.

As far as GonziPN is concerned, we are also being subjected to the banalisation of politics as he takes us from one SNAFU to another thanks to a Prime Minister whose sole objective seems to be something he tends to invariably accuse the PL of having close to its heart.

The insatiable exercise of the lust for power.

(This article was filed prior to yesterday’s parliamentary vote of confidence)

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Leo Brincat is the Shadow Minister for the Environment, Sustainable Development & Climate Change