A Cabinet reshuffle is an important phase of a government. While the spin would have it that a reshuffle, like the latest Muscat one, is done out of necessity, in reality it is an instrument of power, not least because the prime minister, whose constitutional right it is, is completely omnipotent when he carries one out.

In this reshuffle (following the Muscat 1 Cabinet), the excuse was due to Marie Louise Coleiro Preca being elevated to the presidency. However, it went further than just replacing MLCP. It needed to replace Godfrey Farrugia and Franco Mercieca who resigned for different reasons and to replace Karmenu Vella who is destined to be Malta’s nominee for European Commissioner.

So from replacing just one person, it soon became replacing four persons. In fact, four new people were chosen and Cabinet, the largest ever in Malta and possibly elsewhere, remained at full strength when there was a clear chance to use the reshuffle to slim Cabinet down.

The reshuffle, wide as it has been, also shows up some previously unnoticed signs of stress or fault lines in the government majority.

Leaving apart the case of Godfrey Farrugia, there are some signs that the expanded Cabinet put together a year ago needed shoring up.

Take the case of three who have returned to the posts they shadowed while in Opposition: Owen Bonnici got back Culture, Chris Agius got back Youth & Sport, and Stefan Buontempo got back Local Councils.

One must assume, though admittedly that is not always the case, that posts on the Shadow Cabinet are well thought out and match the individual to the post and vice-versa.

So when a government is elected (and by such a huge majority) and then proceeds not to appoint people to the posts they used to shadow, there must be some reason.

Whatever that reason, the fact that these three persons got back ‘their’ posts, which they had shadowed for such a long time in Opposition, is an admission that what was done a year ago was wrong. This was handled so smoothly that few noticed it.

It does not necessarily mean that Jose Herrera who was handling Culture made a mess of it, or that he made a mess of the Local Councils portfolio, nor that Stefan Buontempo made a mess of Sports. In fact, both these persons excelled in the photo opportunities they had, sometimes more than one a day, till the very end.

But right from the beginning, they were thrown in at the deep end. Now the reshuffle has revealed the Head of Government knew he had made the wrong choice and now he has reverted it.

The choice of Karmenu Vella as Commissioner is strange, very strange. First of all, the obvious choice was that which was bandied around in the media in the previous days – Edward Scicluna, who had the background (MEP), the academic qualifications and the aptitude, and reportedly the desire.

There must have been something that blocked Scicluna and I can only think this could have been the state of the economy and/or the difficulty in finding a replacement.

Apart from that, looking around the Cabinet table, there could have been maybe better candidates than Mr Vella, for all the latter’s political record. Maybe there were some who may have desired it (George Vella?) and maybe there was Leo Brincat who has shadowed Finance and Foreign and who was more ‘expendable’.

There are some in the Muscat Cabinet who we may call ‘The Untouchables’ such as Louis Grech, George Vella, Evarist Bartolo, Manwel Mallia and Anton Refalo.

In fact, if one looks closely, they get on with their thing, are not in a rush to get in as many air miles of coverages as the others, and who have surrounded themselves with a comfort zone made up of their close appointees. Their ministries are more or less established, they are the ones they have been shadowing and their teams have been in place for a long time, in some cases since the last time Labour was in government.

The only newcomer is Manwel Mallia and he has had a rough ride over many of the decisions he took, but the amplified ministry he was given – from army to police, to broadcasting – is far too wide for the Prime Minister to remove him from, assuming that he would want to do that.

In pre-reshuffle days, the expectation – well, one of them was that George Vella was to become President. Then, suddenly, the wind veered and Dr Vella has remained in his post. To understand why that happened one needs to delve deep into the innards of the Muscat administration, and I am certainly the least adapted to do so.

Nor can I understand why MLCP was chosen, given Dr Vella was not to be the one. I would have thought Social Policy was the mainstay of a Labour, or Socialist, government and she was extremely good, and popular, at her job. I would have thought no head of government would willingly lose one of his main assets.

Look at Muscat’s friend (I hope not his mentor) Francois Hollande. He chose the most popular man in his Cabinet, Manuel Valls, but only to make him prime minister, not to kick him upstairs to the Élysée.

Could it be, I ask, that this is some signal from Muscat that the government, based on a movement rather than the Labour Party, is moving away from the left-wing Socialist view of the economy (just like Hollande) to a more centrist, capitalist, policy mix in which MLCP would have stuck out like a sore thumb?

Choosing a president does not, should not, depend on the prime minister’s personal preferences but should be based on a wider range of considerations. For all the pomp and circumstance surrounding the six-hour inauguration with some nice touches thrown in, I still cannot follow the reasoning.

To get back to the Karmenu Vella promotion. Or rather the non-promotion of Edward Scicluna. Tourism is in a rather ship-shape position (thanks to the preceding government), so a new hand could be allowed at the tiller. This is Edward Zammit Lewis who has spent the past year engaged in a daily ring-‘o-roses with Chris Cardona since they were practically sharing the same rounds of appearances. Dr Zammit Lewis is now free to be his own man.

Dr Cardona, on the other hand, gets Jose Herrera who once again has been kept away from the area he was shadowing which is Justice.

Another person in the new Cabinet who still has not got what he used to shadow (and in this case was also a minister under Alfred Sant) is Michael Farrugia who used to shadow Health (and was also minister) and who was put in charge of Mepa last year and has now been moved to Social Policy when the whole country knows this post was offered to Godfrey Farrugia who turned it down.

Apart from Michael Farrugia, there was also for instance Deo Debattista, a family doctor, and of course, Chris Fearne who headed a unit at Mater Dei. Yet Dr Muscat did not go for either. He chose the already burdened Konrad Mizzi who is carrying out one of the most signal of the government’s commitments.

Many may perhaps not have noticed that the Opposition, for all the doctors in its ranks, has not chosen a doctor to shadow Health but a management consultant (Claudio Grech), and in a way, Dr Mizzi’s skills are more on the management side than on the health side. This strange choice will remain one of the great imponderables of the Muscat 2 Cabinet.

Mepa gets Michael Falzon, a former deputy leader who has spent the past years somewhat on the margins. There is another former minister, Charles Buhagiar, but he has remained out of Cabinet.

And lastly there is Joe Mizzi. One could call him another ‘Untouchable’ were it not for the fact that the deadline for offers regarding public transport close tomorrow. After that, the Minister for Transport will be hard at work ensuring that the new contractor delivers better than Arriva. That was another of the previous government’s downfalls and one signal reason for the present government’s election.

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