I once described Richard Cachia Caruana as the Sir Bernard Inghams of Malta. I was wrong. Sir Bernard Ingham was the faithful personal assistant and spin-doctor for Margaret Thatcher. RCC is a more than that. Spin doctors have life spans of eight years at the most. RCC has well outlived his political spin doctoring life span.
In the days of Eddie Fenech Adami he was the eminence grise, the man who pulled all the strings, the man who would walk unannounced into a Minister’s office, sit at his desk and put to shame any idea of etiquette.
He is the man who screams constantly at his staff, complains about coffee, hairstyles and keeps people waiting for hours. He was the man who would control everything, including the appointments of staff to the secretariats of ministers.
He did encounter ministers intolerant to his attitude, Austin Gatt and John Dalli are two examples. They do not take to such bad behaviour well.
Yet RCC is unstoppable. Now that he has the Brussels drama scene in his hands, an entire floor at Castille and no Dalli styled Foreign minister breathing down his neck, he has achieved what he was after, his own ultimate regime within the regime.
Before Eddie’s long winded departure, the elderly statesman did not only see to it who was to be the next Leader of the party, he also effectively provided that his faithful RCC be appointed to the honourable position of a minister on the cabinet.
Enter Lawrence Gonzi and the new Prime Minister acceded to RCC’s wishes for his directorate to rest under the wings of the Office of the Prime Minister and not that of the Foreign Minister.
Now can anyone explain why a department dealing with direct relations with the European Union should be taken away from the foreign minister?
The foreign minister was at the time John Dalli. Now it was an open secret that Mr Dalli was not happy with this arrangement.
RCC is now settled comfortably in Brussels and he enjoys a special arrangement with half his time spent in Malta, attending the Cabinet meetings, apart from being here to see that his office functions according to his specific wishes.
That the office in Brussels will cost the Maltese tax-payer Lm9 million is of no consequence to RCC.
Neither is it of consequence who is chosen as the legal representatives when one goes spending millions in Brussels. A story in another newspaper some weeks ago revealed that the lawyer that saw the contract through was…yes say it, was….Ms Daphne Caruana Galizia’s husband.
Nothing at all wrong with that and no reason to be paranoid about such happy coincidences, but it is probably just as well Richard’s name is not John.
After all this is not the first time that RCC has taken interest in Maltese Government properties. Years ago he was, shall we say, concerned with the way Malta House in London was developing.
His very good friend Mr Strickland, who by the way is the politically appointed Ambassador to The Netherlands, was also the happy landlord until last June of the building of Malta Enterprise, rented out for a shocking sum. But then everyone, well just about everyone, has a right to be involved in business.
Now we come to the media. Mr Cachia Caruana does not think much of a free press. He loves a tame press, a press that fits in his way of seeing things.
Thankfully he has stopped pestering me on Sunday morning complaining about a comment I would have passed in this newspaper on the Meinrad Calleja affair. You see it was fine for everyone else to judge, condemn Meinrad Calleja beforehand, but it was a problem if we uncovered Zeppi l-Hafi and his inconsistent testimony. Resigning matters for the Prime Minister of the time, I would say. But then resignations are political decisions are they not?
RCC still has a finger on the pulse of some journalists. Indeed one of his more faithful loudspeakers has now settled in Brussels after having left PBS and transferred to a daily newspaper, much to the consternation of journalists from the same newspaper who would have loved to have a go at the Brussels scene without a flavour of RCC.
RCC is not a phenomenon; he is simply a control freak with a vision of life that endangers the functionality of a democracy and a government that is correctly led by elected representatives.
In Brussels I would not be surprised if he builds bridges with the Labourite MPs… in an effort to nurture them and perhaps to neutralise them.
He could start his luck with Joseph Muscat, since they both share a common friend, Malta’s answer to Peter Arnett, the one and only Mr Godfrey Grima. The man who endorsed Joseph Muscat in his European candidature, was previously commissioned by the Labour party to analyse the 2003 electoral defeat and now is unilaterally chosen by Joe Saliba to do the same for the PN.
But enough on Godfrey Grima, the last time I met him was on a Toni Abela programme where I found him salivating and frolicking with a Malta Labour Party that wanted Malta out of Europe.
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