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While the people are increasingly disgruntled, Gonzi says he doesn’t care about the grumbling and intends carrying on. Karl Schembri analyses what the Prime Minister declaredly ignores, six months since he was sworn into office on the pledge of establishing ‘a new way of doing politics’ 
Going on record saying that you couldn’t care about public disgruntlement might be a ‘new way of doing politics’ in an age of pragmatic expediency, but that’s evidently not what a great part of the electorate expected from the Prime Minister who declared ‘a new way of doing politics’ on being sworn in.
Six months since that day, Lawrence Gonzi is set to mimic his predecessor in the annual ritualistic Independence celebrations Fuq il-Fosos, and his rhetoric is only bound to impress his partisan audience, if it impresses anyone at all.
To give credit to the Prime Minister where it is due, he has tried to tackle issues that had been swept under the carpet for far two long by his predecessor and his efforts to curtail ministerial overspending and instil a consciousness of efficiency, discipline and responsibility are to be lauded. His statements on public cleanliness and the far from adequate public transport were welcome – it is hoped that what he said will not fall on deaf ears.
However, the euphoria preceding EU membership has vanished for good, and the liberating experience that was expected by the discerning pro-EU voters has failed to materialise. Worse still, the European experience has so far made the country face the most negative of measures, even if they are not necessarily dictated from Brussels.
Backbenchers, and even some ministers and their juniors, privately acknowledge the public’s resentment, even though they do not have the moral fibre to stand up in the open and represent their constituencies.
Gone is the overconfident cohesion verging on arrogance which Fenech Adami managed to instil among his MPs and party men, although the propaganda machine keeps regurgitating the same recycled slogans that impress nobody. Even worse, the PN’s and its apologists’ propaganda strategy is antagonising great parts of the moderate, discerning electoral base through unprecedented attacks on the electorate’s own expectations.
By dismissing public criticism, if not outrage, as mere ‘grumbling,’ the Prime Minister has manifested his political insensitivity at a time when the government itself is constantly broadcasting negative and inconsistent messages.
“Perhaps those who are unable to stand the heat ought to get out of the kitchen!” The Times said, scolding the government in its leader last week.
“I think he means well,” one Nationalist backbencher told me last week. “He may still be learning the cunning ways of politics; I prefer to think he is refusing to be dishonest at the cost of appearing naïve.”
Indeed, shrewdness is not Gonzi’s forte, but that doesn’t mean he and his aides are transparent and consistent either. He is definitely surrounded by the wrong people. They are utterly alien to everything that the ever-increasing discerning middle-class electorate holds dear, with an instinct to boss us about, they are reactive to criticism, humourless, clerical in their arguments, obsessed by the grim struggle to cling on to power.
Inconsistent messages
With perhaps too much on his plate, Gonzi is constantly juggling his roles. On one occasion he tells his chairmen and chief executives to cut down on expenses, on another he approves a Lm9 million property in Brussels to house none other than Malta’s Permanent Representative to the EU and his entourage. “All this to satisfy the folie de grandeur of just one person,” Opposition Leader Alfred Sant wrote in his Times column last week.
Of course, he has inherited all this from what is now emerging as his totally out of touch predecessor who is now sitting comfortably on the Presidential throne, and Gonzi should be credited for taking some Herculean struggles directly under his charge (read ‘Ministry of Finance’). Still, the former president of Azzjoni Kattolika has yet to prove himself as the treasurer of the state and the country’s leader at the same time, when hard-hitting economic decisions are to be taken. Also, he has so far done little to get rid of the publicly revolting facets of Fenech Adami’s legacy: the friends of friends network.
As minister of finance, he would do well to wake up from the ‘liberal’ dream of his predecessors (both Fenech Adami and Dalli) and realise what Malta’s economy of scale really requires it to remain sustainable. In Italy, our northern giant neighbour, Berlusconi’s government has just started negotiations with supermarket chains to control prices in the wake of hefty price increases, in a bid to control inflation. Over here, government announces its intention to remove price control over Maltese bread, paving the way for soaring prices of staple food in the months to come, while other everyday products and home appliances are already costlier than a month ago thanks to eco-taxes.
Government says a reform in university stipends system is imminent, but it gives no sign of any intention to invest in university, provoking unprecedented criticism from the university lecturers’ union. Meanwhile, government revokes a new fee on graduation certificates introduced (somewhat brusquely) by the “autonomous” University, and at the same time expects the Rector to raise his own revenue to make ends meet.
The ongoing pseudo-restructuring at a multitude of government entities is only resulting in the effective ‘redeployment’ of government workers or hefty golden handshakes that are paid from public coffers, not to mention the disastrous annihilation of PBS, which Gonzi doesn’t even dare refer to.
Ambivalent decisions
Apart from the measures themselves, Gonzi’s decisions so far have been marred by his jittery, ambivalent way of imposing them, with the ensuing u-turns stripping him even further of political capital. Even when the decisions are not directly his, as leader of the Cabinet he is ultimately bearing the brunt of rushed decisions that have to be somehow reversed or amended soon after they are announced.
The smoking ban, eco-taxes, and the much-deferred pensions reform (how many reports have been commissioned?) have attracted much criticism, but even the circles who are in agreement with the government are confused by the Prime Minister’s shaky follow-up to his own ‘decisive’ statements.
The Dalli affair was another blow for Gonzi and the way he dealt with it did not serve much to establish him as a sharp decision maker. He left his foreign minister dangling for a whole month, unable as he was to give him the sack or defend him in the face of revelations about his family’s contract with an Iranian shipping company and about air tickets bought by his ministry from a tourist agency with links to Dalli’s next of kin.
Much to his credit, in the end Gonzi did establish an ethical benchmark which Fenech Adami would have never laid out in public. After Dalli’s resignation, ministers and high government officials are expected to keep their public role at an arm’s length from their private interests. Basing our assumptions on the universal history of politics, we should expect a couple more resignations from Gonzi’s Cabinet in the months to come.
He defends the Lm9 million property purchase at all costs while at the same time he is unable to answer a straight question: Will the government have to pay taxes on the four (is it four?) floors it intends to commercialise within the Brussels Embassy?
“God forbid,” he said when I asked him a couple of weeks ago, adding that he had to ask his legal consultants and would get back to me. That’s quite a blunder for a Prime Minister who tells journalists to ‘do their homework’ before asking him questions. He hasn’t answered the question yet.
“We need golf”
He does seem decided on having two new golf courses, though. In fact it seems to be his topmost priority right now, forcing MEPA to come up, within a month, with a list of sites where these two golf courses could be located.
“We need two golf courses,” he said. And why are golf courses so important? Because, Gonzi believes, they will “generate employment” and “increase tourism” according to some obscure theoretical formula that has yet to be divulged.
The moment the Prime Minister qualifies golf courses as a “need,” he is betraying the confusion of his own priorities at a time when he should be having nightmares about the upcoming budget (it’s in less than two months’ time) and about the promised national projects that are, one by one, being brought to a standstill. Who needs the golf courses and how urgently? Is it so urgent as to warrant the Prime Minister’s intervention? How big is the need for these golf courses?
Why not set the Mater Dei Hospital as his priority and give a definite deadline for its opening instead? Surely, he must realise that a new, modern hospital is a ‘need’ for Maltese taxpayers? Why not order a radical rehaul to the public transport system within a month? By October, many more people would be affected by such a decision than through MEPA’s golf list. Why not invest a couple of millions in new archaeological excavations to boost our tourism? He must surely know that a good part of Malta’s rich archaeological heritage is just beneath our feet waiting to be unearthed.
No, golf courses are the number one item on Gonzi’s priority of needs. Possibly, it is also one of Joe Saliba’s visionary way of turning Malta “into a centre of European excellence.”
Perhaps, besides the uphill climb for economic recovery, Gonzi’s top priority should be to break with the past once and for all. Six months since he took over, he has failed to leave his imprint: Cabinet is basically the same as Fenech Adami’s, including the same inefficient ministers; Richard Cachia Caruana still occupies the only unelected seat in Cabinet, granted to him by Fenech Adami, with all the power but very little accountability that comes with the job.
At the end of the day if Malta’s economic revival is of the importance that most commentators suggest, Gonzi’s has not taken any measures that are likely to kick start a revival. The introduction of the so-called ‘eco-contribution’ and the new anti-smoking law coming not so long after VAT was increased to 18 percent will certainly not encourage spending, entrepreneurship or investment.
Until he gets his priorities right and communicates them effectively, Gonzi will remain a Prime Minister who has not captured the imagination of the people with an emotive cause that would take the country forward. In all fairness, it is the inevitability of circumstances arising from the question that the PN was so afraid of dealing with a year and a half ago: After Europe, what?
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