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A combination of fortitude, chance and political chess contributes to people being kicked upstairs. Who would have guessed that Joe Saliba and Jason Micallef were to become Secretary Generals of the two main political parties.
Joe Saliba wants us to believe that he led the Nationalist party to victory in three consecutive electoral victories. The first one was in 1998, the second one was the 2003 April national election and the third instance was Lawrence Gonzi’s election as PN party leader.
Possibly, if not probably, Wenzu Mintoff’s former bodyguard also adds the referendum result as another achievement.
Now, for the facts.
In 1998, governance was robbed from Alfred Sant and given back to Eddie Fenech Adami, as a result of the erratic behaviour of il-Perit, the most unreasonable back-bencher any political party would pray not to have.
Today, after having experienced the idiosyncrasies of Dom Mintoff in court I can only empathise with Alfred Sant. How silly of me to have romanticised about il-Perit in 1998, the man should be judged for what he is; an egocentric politician who rammed down autocratic extremist policies down the throats of thousands of Maltese and Gozitan citizens.
The second so called victory for Mr Saliba was the 2003 election.
Few people are in the know that in the 2003 election, the strategy group directing the PN campaign consisted of Richard Cachia Caruana, Joe Saliba, Eddie Fenech Adami, John Dalli, and Lawrence Gonzi, in that order of importance I would think.
In this year’s campaign for the new PN leader, Joe Saliba may have taken an apparent back room position but in truth he was always working in favour of one candidate.
Now, in this election, he too is serving as the generalissimo for the campaign..
Better still, from what I can understand from the press conferences, he is addressing the press when the Prime Minister should be doing the talking.
Eddie would never have tolerated Mr Saliba interjecting after his delivery.
Mr Saliba appears to want to control, or worse than that he thinks that he is the Nationalist party. And all those who do not agree with him or do not fall in line are aliens, adversaries and not to be trusted.
Mr Saliba will be facing another electoral result, which may well signal his first electoral defeat. Indeed, this is Mr Saliba’s first test on his own steam, in the other electoral tests he had Dom Mintoff to help him as his campaign manager and in last year’s election, he had the Europe ticket on his side.
Mr Saliba may not be a very much loved figure at Pieta, but he is no dodo. To his credit he has had the courage to make changes in his party. Rumour has it and Mr Saliba will not confirm or deny it, that the state of the PN finances are far from good. So much so that Mr Saliba, writing to this newspaper, said that he did not have the money to advertise his campaign in this newspaper. Pity considering how liberal and open minded MaltaToday readers happen to be. Maltese politics needs some radical changes, but it is not only the Labour party that needs to reform and to change.
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