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As from today, Malta will have a President who a good chunk of the Maltese do not want. But it is the new Prime Minister, not the President, who will face the music. Karl Schembri writes why
åAs Eddie Fenech Adami is sworn in as President this morning, the pomp and fanfare surrounding the event will only serve to expose the grotesque reality behind it.
Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi’s dismal failure at his first test in national reconciliation will today assume symbolic proportions. With the backdrop of the Palace frescoes, in an ambience of diplomatic pretension, the whole ceremony will amplify the sheer vulgarity of it all.
It was the Leader of the Opposition, Alfred Sant – politician and playwright – who used the word “vulgar” to describe Fenech Adami’s Presidential take-over. In his speech to Parliament last Monday, Sant attacked Gonzi’s decision with weary disdain and what he called, “the sheer vulgarity” surrounding it.
Indeed, Sant’s choice of words last Monday was impeccable. Riding over the wave of resentment expressed by the very participant observers who support the Nationalist establishment, he dissected Gonzi’s justifications for choosing Fenech Adami with razor-sharp rational arguments. More than that, he slammed the government for offending good taste, manners, and propriety in taking the divisive decision.
For the moderate, discerning PN supporters, good taste and perhaps some bad memories under Mintoff’s government, more than ideology, is what keeps them attached to their party. On the contrary, Fenech Adami’s appointment as president is the definition of bad taste.
For the other, Labourite half of Malta, Gonzi failed in making ‘the required gesture’ of reconciliation.
As Arnold Cassola of Alternattiva Demokratika put it, the message the PN is sending out is that of winner takes all: “No idea of magnanimity here; no intelligent reading of history - which clearly would show that it is the victor that must concede something to the beaten adversary.”
Gonzi’s legalistic pretexts for choosing his predecessor were typical of a Nationalist Christian lawyer in power – the type that Sant is so good at exposing to ridicule. He called them, “clerical, Jesuitical.” Apart from national unity, Gonzi had a golden chance to prove he would do away with the Fenech Adami-style of legalistic, defensive politics, but there again, he failed.
Significantly, Dr Gonzi did not get one round of applause from the government bench during his emotional defence of Fenech Adami and his appointment to the highest office.
While the new President will shroud himself with Presidential immunity this morning, it’s the Prime Minister who will remain in the line of fire.
While Fenech Adami has been much criticised for accepting the nomination, or rather, masterminding it, against his own wife’s consent - it is rumoured that she’s refusing to relocate from Birkirkara to San Anton Palace - Gonzi remains the man who has to answer for the decision. And if what some of his Cabinet colleagues say privately is true – that Gonzi actually had some reservations about Fenech Adami’s appointment – it just goes to show how weak the new Prime Minister is when faced with contentious decisions.
Whether Labour will keep up the momentum, without turning the opposition into overkill, will very much depend on Sant’s strategy of opposition – and he has not proved himself an effective strategist, since he lost his job at Castille.
Unlike Fenech Adami, who had two main essential crusades to rally the people behind him and therefore secure his throne – civil liberties in ’87, Europe in ’03 – Gonzi has no political cause to fight in the people’s eyes. There are huge problems to solve, national ones at that, and they are generating more divisiveness than ever.
UHM’s call for a social pact was not followed by the “much required gesture” from the government to gain all the interested parties’ trust, and it is going to be difficult to get Labour (and GWU by extension) to endorse a national restructuring plan this way.
Meanwhile, people’s impatience is growing at an alarming rate. This country does not have a tradition of public dissent towards the establishment; it is more familiar with private grumbling individuals who camouflage their interests to their maximum gain. But during the past days there has been a surge of public discontent from even the more unlikely sources. In his first week in office, Gonzi has sown the seed of public dissent.
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