Over the weekend, Nationalist Party leader Simon Busuttil made the first of many changes or reshuffles that he will need to make in the future, if the party is ever to make it back to government.
This time, one of the persons who was moved was former minister of health Joe Cassar.
Now, Dr Cassar was the only one of the former Cabinet to openly support Dr Busuttil for deputy leader last winter when the rest of Cabinet stood behind Tonio Fenech.
It thus speaks volumes about Dr Busuttil that he would sacrifice his own friend and supporter in the very first reshuffle.
Speaking to The Times on Sunday, Dr Cassar said the reshuffle ‘had been blown out of proportion’. Of course, anyone in his position would probably say that.
But this was not how the people who wrote in on the comments pages saw it. But that’s not a cross section of the population. And after all, Dr Cassar has simply been moved to education where he will face a redoubtable opponent in Minister Evarist Bartolo.
Dr Cassar, a parliamentary secretary when John Dalli was Minister of Health, succeeded Mr Dalli when the latter was nominated as a European Commissioner.
All who know him can vouch he is a serious, honest and hardworking person.
Yet the health sector, especially Mater Dei Hospital, saps the strength of far more able persons. In other times, ministers were able to kick the can down the road and sleep lightly. This is no longer the case now. People look at the huge new hospital and want to know why things are not as they should be. Enough time has elapsed now for things to be fixed and hitches remedied.
The Labour government, which still has not managed to get to grips with things despite the hardworking and well-meaning present minister, Godfrey Farrugia, saw fit to ask for help from former minister John Dalli.
This is a political minefield and, perhaps predictably, the Labour-leaning media have started to discover what they claim are examples of waste and bad planning in various sections of the hospital and the health service in general.
The proof of the pudding will only come when the present government, with Mr Dalli’s help, gets down to improving things at the hospital. So far, most of what we have seen is cosmetic changes. And next door there is the Oncology Centre coming up nicely which will, when finished next year, absorb some of Mater Dei’s very precious bed space.
Instead of Dr Cassar, Dr Busuttil has gone for a newcomer as MP, Claudio Grech, who is not a doctor. Dr Busuttil had other doctors in the parliamentary group but either he did not feel that a doctor would suit the post or else he felt that Mr Grech, a business processes consultant, could do better. And after all, Mr Dalli is no doctor either and he served as Minister of Health and is now a consultant.
Of course, being in Opposition has its advantages: One can say pretty much what one wants to say and hang the consequences. Michael Farrugia lived on that for years and years, but then Prime Minister Muscat did not see fit to appoint him as minister after all those years as shadow minister.
Politicians of all hues find it extremely difficult when it’s their turn to manage a deeply complicated machine such as government with its various quirks, mired with so many issues, ranging from promotions to appointments. This, especially at the hospital where there are so many levels of staff, each with its different union, many times at loggerheads with each other.
That is the monster successive governments have created and it’s a courageous (or foolhardy) politician who thinks he can safely ride the tiger. At the same time, one must also remember that the key person in all this is the patient who needs help, assistance and comfort, not the pecking order in the ward or any remuneration dispute. Both Dr Cassar and Dr Farrugia excel in human warmth, but both Dr Muscat and Dr Busuttil realized that human warmth is not enough.