Italian Premier Monti was gentleman enough to commit himself to resign the moment he detected the first signs of weakening majority support in Parliament for his government. He preferred to act rather than to dither.

Unlike Lawrence Gonzi who chose to play the partisan game till the very end and stick to his seat of power at all costs for months on end.

I am writing this article without any firm inkling as to what emerged from yesterday’s crucial vote in Parliament.

By the time of writing the Prime Minister has just been reported to have claimed that the election will be held EARLY next year, irrespective of the outcome of the vote.

Although he has now changed tack and argued that the budget and the vote of confidence should have been tackled separately or in parallel with each other, originally Gonzi was the one who actual bound the two issues together when he made it clear that this year’s budget would be a budget with a difference, in voting terms. In the sense, that he wanted it to be judged as a vote of confidence or no confidence in government.

While his deputy leader has been going on about how the PN had become a victim of its own successes, his first few days in office showed that the dark side of GonziPN is still alive and well and kicking.

This was confirmed not only by the sheer negativity of the anonymous leaflet that the PN sent to various government employees as part of its scare mongering campaign, but also as a result of the flip flop manner in which GonziPN chose to be economical with the truth in its handling of this disgusting PR job.

We first had the GonziPN President denying any party association with this alarmist leaflet only for her to declare a few moments later that although it did not specify its origins it was after all a PN publication. What was even worse was that at a later stage she even had the cheek to claim that this specifically targeted flyer was sent to government employees purely on the basis of information gleaned from the electoral register.

With one sweep we had the strongest of evidence that under the new PN deputy leader nothing of substance has changed or will change, so much so that we had twisting of facts and also full breaches of data protection regulations. Surely a sign of pleasures yet to come! One should not be surprised at all given that he was responsible for the GonziPN manifesto of 2008 as seems to be the case with the manifesto of the forthcoming elections.

The worst aspect of the political crisis that we have experienced throughout the past year or so is that it was all so avoidable.

As early as January we had business leaders calling for an end to the political crisis and uncertainty.

This had been confirmed by the director general of a leading employers’ association who had then gone on record stating that there is no question that the political impasse is causing businesses and consumers to postpone decisions at a time when the economy can ill afford to deal with a crisis of our own making.

The Association official had then stated that his organization had wanted this crisis to be resolve immediately.

Which begs the question: Was it resolved?

Did Gonzi’s decision to seek the support of his party councilors address this issue when the problem was never one at delegate level but one far higher up – within his own parliamentary group?

Even the Chamber of Commerce had argued that they would have liked to see the then current situation resolved with the least negative repercussions on the business community.

On the contrary, GonziPN showed complete disregard for their concerns when rather than keep uncertainty at bay he allowed it to be exacerbated.

The more certain quarters understandably focused on the bleak international circumstances, the more GonziPN should have acted faster and truly in the national interest.

But it has long been evident that rather than embarking on a concerted effort towards keeping the economy on track, GonziPN’s sole interest was political survival, in the hope that clinging on to power could ultimately lead to or pave the way for a reversal of fortunes.

Although Gonzi had invoked the national interest against the prospect of a premature return to the polls, GonziPN showed its true colours when he chose to go to his party to confirm his own leadership.

As commentators had remarked then this was nothing but an unprecedented internal leadership contest that nobody – not even Franco Debono – had asked for.

That he was bound to win this internal loyalty test had been a foregone conclusion from the word go, even though it turned out to be nothing but a pyrrhic victory.

At the time of that particular Council meeting eminent members of Gonzi’s Cabinet, such as Mario de Marco had told him publicly in January 2012 that we need to do a lot of soul searching…. .we need to consolidate and project ourselves for the future. We need to also reach out more effectively.

This showed that even in the eyes of his closest collaborators, GonziPN was being perceived as having long been dysfunctional. Implicitly going on to prove that his dissident MPs could have had a point after all!

It was in this spirit that The Sunday Times that is reported to be highly supportive of a particular Government Minister wrote a spot on editorial called “Taking the country for a ride?” on 20 January this year.

It had popped the question about the PN rebel MP – how long can the government realistically go on in such an unstable manner? Days for sure, some weeks perhaps, but definitely not for months. (And this all happened before Government actually lost its majority in the House and ended up with one of its MPs declaring himself an independent MP – regardless of his voting patterns).

Commentators have been urging GonziPN since then that this pantomime and this uncertainty had to come to an end, and that it must come to an end soon in order to avoid damaging the country.

Since January GonziPN has been warned editorially by the same newspaper, that the clock can only tick for so long before the bomb explodes…..

Gonzi’s main concern then was not the state of the economy or the national interest but the deep fear that he risked riding into political oblivion and condemning his party to years in Opposition with a divided party.

Some had even urged compromise.

But in reality has anything changed since these events unfolded almost a year ago?

Has the country won any new hard earned stability or not?
Or did we all have to go down this road, merely for Gonzi to be able to claim that regardless of the economic cost, he managed to remain in power for almost the whole term of his legislature.

One can cite various personalities who had then argued that there are no ifs and buts, with an election being the only solution to stem the instability.

That we have had to wait for yesterday’s vote, which GonziPN was reported to have wanted to turn into a vote of confidence, is a sad confirmation of the hubris that has taken over GonziPN. Regardless of any cosmetic changes that it might have undergone since then.

There will come a time when the economic cost of buying time will be assessed.

After all in January 2012 the MEA had stated that political instability was a bigger threat to the economy than a credit rating downgrade.

If GonziPN will chose to go for a long and tortuous campaign it will merely confirm that it has learnt nothing over the past year and will only come across as most determined to try and serve its own party’s interests best.

In July Gonzi had been warned editorially (The Times 21.7.12) that he was misreading public sentiment. We now have the proof.

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(This article was written PRIOR to the budgetary vote of confidence of yesterday- Monday)