There seems to be a belief among politicians that the untrammelled influence of the construction lobby is there to be courted rather than curbed. It makes you wonder who they think is actually in charge, whether it is they, the politicians, or the construction magnates.
The politicians probably believe they are the ones calling the shots, but reality shows otherwise. With politicians from both sides of the divide chasing after individuals like Silvio Debono and Sandro Chetcuti, the perception out here is that it is they who are giving the political parties the run-around, and not the reverse.
The Nationalist Party has burned its bridges with Silvio Debono – or the other way around; same difference – and not before time. But Sandro Chetcuti is still there, hanging around, getting a kick out of having both the Prime Minister and the Opposition leader trying to get him onto their side. Muscat doesn’t have to try, because Chetcuti is a dyed-in-the-wool Labour Party supporter and lifelong admirer of Dom Mintoff. He boasts of having raised seven-digit sums in donations for Muscat’s general election campaign of 2013.
He was a fixture on the infamous ‘fourth floor’ at Labour HQ, and basks in all the talk of his having had a desk there, where he introduced business operators to Labour. He was certainly one of those who bent over backwards to organise lunches and suppers for Muscat, so that he could make the acquaintance of what pass for the big cheeses in Malta’s economy. What did Chetcuti get out of this? Your guess is as good as mine.
Quite frankly, I wouldn’t touch somebody like that with a barge-pole. They’re only in it for the main chance and for what they can get for their business. This might suit somebody of Joseph Muscat’s underhand character perfectly well, because he’s far more interested in striking (often suspect) deals than he is in governing. But the Nationalist Party has a track record of governing rather than striking deals, and it really shouldn’t be going down any such route.
In simple terms, people like Sandro Chetcuti are political poison. The Nationalist Party, even if it refused to see this before, now has the full proof of this from the way things panned out with Silvio Debono. They have finally understood just what an unsavoury character he is, and have got to see first-hand the meaning of the maxim that he who sups with the devil needs a long spoon.
If Chetcuti has been flirting with the Nationalist Party, and he most certainly has, it is only because he is angry at the deal which his rival Debono got from the government, at St George’s Bay. I understand the mentality of men like Chetcuti. His reasoning here will have been that he did all that to raise funds for Muscat in 2013, and introduced him to all those people, but then Muscat goes and gives the St George’s Bay land to Silvio Debono instead. Yes, it was a tender – but hang on, it wasn’t quite, because the parameters were changed afterwards on the basis that there was only one bidder, Debono himself.
As somebody who “follows the media (my dear)”, I noticed a couple of weeks ago that Chetcuti’s tune had switched back to praising the government effusively. He must have struck some kind of deal of his own with them, I thought, and days later Konrad Mizzi announced that the Water Services Corporation and the Malta Developers Association, which Chetcuti leads, are to go into the solar farm business together. Chetcuti oozed praise for Mizzi and his initiatives at that press conference. It should have been all the Nationalist Party needed to hear before pouring petrol on that particular bridge and chucking a match at it.
On the whole, people are far too impressed by money, and that includes our politicians. Muscat, Konrad Mizzi and Keith Schembri are impressed by money because they want it, and admire the people who have it and seek to strike deals with them. The Nationalists are not like that, but their problem – the way I see it – is that they fail to distinguish between different types of business operators and attribute far too much power and influence to money. They chase what they perceive to be the power and influence of people like Silvio Debono (fortunately, no longer) and Sandro Chetcuti, completely impervious to the fact that, in reality, it is Silvio Debono and Sandro Chetcuti who are chasing them because they are wholly dependent on laws, regulations and permits as tailored by politicians.
It is because Silvio Debono chased Joseph Muscat (while pretending to be chasing Lawrence Gonzi, which got him nowhere) that he got the deal which he did on public land at St George’s Bay. Muscat probably thought he was chasing Debono’s power, influence and money, but it was Debono who was chasing him and who, by doing that, got what he wanted.
The political parties need to understand that people in general are disgusted by the bullying construction lobby. We have had enough of them. They are in our faces, all the time, demanding more, turning the country into a chaotic mess and eating up more and more land. The people who can’t stand all this building going on all over the place, and the arrogance of individuals like Chetcuti, who behave as though they are running the country by playing the government and the Opposition off against each other, far outnumber the builders. By pandering to specimens like Sandro Chetcuti and Silvio Debono (no more of that, we hope), the Nationalist Party stands to lose votes, not gain them. The Nationalist Party’s market is completely different to Labour’s. The people who vote for it are by definition those who are disgusted by Labour’s choices. Replicating Labour’s choices of ‘heroes’ is not going to help the Nationalist Party get anywhere.
The most effective way for the Nationalists to enhance their standing with their natural electorate is to publicly dump people like Chetcuti in the bin when he comes calling so as to keep his business options open. Just put Chetcuti in his place, and do what you can to keep him there. Then tell us about it, and we’ll vote for you far more enthusiastically than we would otherwise.
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