News | Sunday, 28 December 2008

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The improbable triumph of GonziPN

Karl Schembri
At the end of the day, Lawrence Gonzi read it right. After inheriting a geriatric administration that had paved the way for his leadership, Gonzi realised he was the one and only factor that could win him the election, in the form of GonziPN.
It was a high-risk strategy that paid off in the end in an amazing victory against all odds – including but not limited to a deceitful MP whom everyone believed was an environmentalist but had signed a contract to turn pristine countryside into a disco, a useless health minister who was responsible for nothing but a weekly Times column, and a veritable web of friends of friends getting all they could for themselves from the state.
Gonzi’s appeal to the electorate to vote for new faces worked wonders. In one fell swoop, he sacked the old guard that installed him in the first place, with a clear mandate from the people to somehow start afresh. The result is a trimmed Cabinet with super ministers and a regiment of old soldiers who fell by the wayside; a much weaker government with only a one seat majority and a paltry 1,500 votes tipping the balance towards Gonzi to keep his office at Castille in what was perhaps the longest night in Maltese politics.

GonziPN
The formula was illogical, yet Gonzi persisted in his belief he could make it. As the party lost one local election after the other, and the MEPs election in 2004, Gonzi realised the remnants of the Fenech Adami regime were just too in the way for him to steer his ship, but he could do nothing short of a clear mandate to sweep out the old guard.
Helping Gonzi, Alfred Sant was an unwitting Trojan horse in the Labour camp for the PN. Back in action at the end of January after his major operation, Sant gave it to the PN on a plate when he outlined the reception class proposal – an idea that kept haunting him till March under the PN’s spin of a “repeater class”, which by election day would turn out inapplicable for private schools while the De La Salle Brothers – whom Sant had referred to as having already introduced it – denied it outright.
Then, still in January, Sant proposed reopening negotiations with the EU about the dockyards. As if that was not enough, Sant’s deputy, Charles Mangion, screws it up big time when he said in an interview that overtime would be paid at an hourly rate – sending back the party to justify its every new policy proposal as it came under incessant attacks from the PN.

PN edges forward
By the third week of the campaign, MaltaToday’s opinion poll showed the PN in the lead for the first time, overcoming Labour’s 2% lead the previous week, while Tonio Fenech came under fierce criticism for donations to private and profitable companies from the good causes fund. Meanwhile Gonzi kept setting the agenda by promising to take responsibility for MEPA, just as he was signing a secret deal with Armier squatters to legalise their position within six months.
Towards the end of February, Labour swept the carpet from under Gonzi’s feet, sending him in panic mode, to the extent of having to be brought back from Gozo on military helicopter, to deny claims that his Cabinet had agreed with charging fees for public health services. But the real bomb from Labour came with the revelation of Pullicino Orlando’s plans to change an area of land in Mistra into an open air disco. The MP was audacious enough to face Sant and hound him on the campaign trail, but ended up making a fool of himself. And yet, not only was he not blemished on his constituency for his dishonest shows of public crying, but he was elected on two districts as if he was a saint, with some help from the party machine.
As Sant must have bitterly learnt, corruption, lies and nepotism do not lead to a change in government. And Sant himself – despite having his name unblemished in any corruption scandals – suffered greatly in terms of credibility, with Gonzi winning the credibility stakes in every survey, even when the PN was trailing behind Labour.

The aftermath
The aftermath is all we have left: Sant stepped down, irrevocably; as did Alternattiva Demokratika’s Harry Vassallo, and with them a bunch of Nationalist veterans who didn’t even get elected. Gonzi himself found he was snubbed by 9.2% of those who had voted for his party, 90 days after his improbable re-election, while only 38% voters judge him positively.
After banking on Gonzi’s popularity to win the election on the GonziPN platform, the Prime Minister is now being held personally accountable for the very high expectations raised in the electoral campaign. During the election the Prime Minister warned about “dark clouds on the horizon” when referring to the international situation, yet he had no qualms promising that the country’s finances were on a sound footing. Now, everyone will try remembering that when they get the first water and electricity bills.

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