August is a lazy month and with a good slice of the population gearing up for a break and a holiday, the Prime Minister must be thanking his lucky stars that the political heatwave of the last couple of months will subside and offer him a short reprieve
He has so far managed to dodge his dissenters and carried his government through a difficult winter and spring. But he has managed to do so not without collateral damage as now his party and government have scraped the bottom of political credibility. The polls speak for themselves and it will take more than chutzpah to turn the situation in his favour in the few months left before the next general election. Indeed the country has been plunged into the silly situation of a coalition government, with an ex PN MP calling the shots in and out of Parliament as from now on.
Beyond the great national debate taking place about whether govern-ment has now lost its majority in Parliament and its moral authority to lead the country, all nationalist MPs I have had the honour of crossing swords with during the last few weeks were unable to declare that they are confident that henceforth government will be able to pass ordinary legislation and money bills through parliament.
On the one hand they speak as if the Prime Minister has a licence to continue governing. But on the other hand they cannot be bullish about their parliamentary majority any longer and they are more conspicuous by their silence about the future than about their resilience to keep hanging on. There is doubtlessly a sense of distrust in Parliament and the more they stay away from it the better they feel. The problem is that they cannot do without it, more so that the government will need to push through another budget next October with Dr Franco Debono, still a PN MP, already threatening Dr Gonzi with further dissent unless minister Austin Gatt calls it a day, and provided that the utility rates are revised downwards.
The truth is that legally and constitutionally speaking this government can carry on chugging on for the rest of this legislature’s life, but the country has most definitely lost the stability and certainty that it deserves. The question facing the Prime Minister is whether he is in a position to legislate. He cannot dodge the question for too long as business is already grinding to a halt.
JPO, as an independent MP, has softened his attitude towards the government but he is nonetheless very unpredictable. His silence might be stemming from the fact that his attention is at this moment completely drawn towards imminent developments in his private life, so we will talk of his political composure only after his honeymoon is over. But even so, Dr Franco Debono is already breathing down the Prime Minister's neck, so come October, Dr Gonzi will be facing a tall order to try to keep his government floating.
The reasons being bandied about for why Dr Debono is behaving so ruthlessly are totally irrelevant to the question of stability. They have described Dr Debono as a man who is obsessively ambitious, with an insatiable greed for position and power, or even worse that he is an ambulant lunatic. But even if, for argument’s sake, he is, (and he is neither one nor the other), the question of stability remains. Trying to determine the man’s Psyche is not a solution to the current crisis. Actually it can only escalate the crisis by painting Dr Debono in a corner.
After a rather rowdy seven months there is now a relative calm. And although Dr Debono is still chasing the Prime Minister, the government and the Nationalist Party, there are now relatively broad intervals of silence between one broadside and the other. This will end sooner rather than later and the political tensions will inevitably rise again.
Let’s wait for the next big bill in Parliament.
Dr Gulia is the Opposition’s Main Spokesman for Tourism and Air Malta