News | Sunday, 28 December 2008

PRINT THIS ARTICLE

Gattocracy

2008 was a good year for government hitman Austin Gatt, who took on the monopolies, unions and environmentalists. Red rag to a bull.

Matthew Vella

Arrogant. Headstrong. Awe-inspiring. No wonder Labour calls him Prime Minister No. 2.
The redoubtable Austin Gatt has become a veritable minder for Lawrence Gonzi. Excelling in messy situations, there is no job too dangerous or dirty for the teflon minister.
2008 was no exception for Gatt. His ambitious and labyrinthine portfolio comprised road networks, public works, essential services, and even national identity management. With roads, he picked up where the inept Jesmond Mugliett had left, taking on both the transport union and environmentalists. He challenged the status quo with a shocking cost-recovery plan on energy and water providers. He handled all urban development projects, the harbour regeneration plans, and public works. And he also took on the public and land registries, and the identity card and passport office. With Mugliett and Ninu Zammit ousted from the Cabinet, it was left to Gatt to take on their portfolios, and even part of the home affairs ministry.
With his superministry come the scraps and the fights. Schoolyard bully that he is, Gatt has revelled in standoffs with union men, bus drivers, Labour, the media, the hecklers and the critics, and those who stand in the way of his self-styled reformism.
But if it’s not his reforms that voters appreciate in Gatt, it’s his ham-fisted approach that gives him both notoriety and an army of admirers. His brash, inelegant and Mintoffian brinkmanship has earned him a reputation for being a ‘doer’. Voters like Gatt’s intrinsic leadership, courage and the unexamined manner in which he shrugs off criticism. But at what cost does this come for both the government, and the nation?

Get on the bus
Gatt’s first imprint on 2008 was his war against the transport monopolies, with an ambitious plan for a total overhaul of the public transport network. But before setting off for battle and liberalise the service, Gatt was going to have to take on the transport unions.
In July he spearheaded the attack with a jab at the funeral hearses association – a conglomerate of ten operators – setting the wheels of liberalisation in motion. The move sparked a hastily organised transport federation, led by Victor Spiteri, the president of the Public Transport Association. All bus drivers, taxi drivers, hearses and minivans went on a strike that paralysed the island for two days, as a response to Gatt’s proposed liberalisation.
The strike did little to endear the unions to the general public. Private chauffeurs were attacked in the roads, and accused of undermining the strike; army officers operating an emergency transport service were immobilised by the strikers. Mayhem ensued, and Gatt’s textbook plan was only falling into place neatly.
Of course, Gatt was never going to attempt a moral conversion of the strikers to his lofty aims. Instead, he offered €60,000 to the hearses association to be distributed among its 10 members so that they could ‘restructure’ their operations and face the liberalisation process. Undercutting the other unions with his cash offer, the whole lobby fell down like a deck of cards, and the strike was instantly called off.
As declared by Gatt himself on the last day of the strike, the unions had inadvertently speeded up the liberalisation process. “I had no particular rush to liberalise taxis and minibuses,” Gatt admitted. “They brought it on themselves, so now we’ll keep up the momentum.”

Money talks
With round one going for Gatt, the clash with the unsavoury mega-lobby of bus drivers seemed to have breathed new life into the PN government. Three months since its re-election, Gonzi’s government had already started to look like a lame duck, paralysed by its inability to show Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando the door, and warning voters it won’t be able to cut taxes as promised because of the international oil and food prices. The perception of weariness was further reinforced by the election of the youthful Joseph Muscat as Labour leader.
When all seemed so bleak for the PN, Gonzi’s enfants terribles came to his rescue, first with John Dalli embarking on the long-promised (but never delivered) rent reform; then with Austin Gatt, with the proposed privatisation of the dockyard.
In the same way Gatt used cash to destabilise the show of force by the public transport union, so did the government manage to undercut the General Workers Union by offering dockyard workers the kind of golden handshake they could not refuse.
Clearly, it’s always money that prevails. In the post-ideological world of Gonzi’s government, rationalisation and efficiency are what matter most, especially when the rising price of oil, and a pre-electoral bill of some €70 million in the first three months of 2008 wreaked havoc with the government’s control of the deficit.

Lights out
Austin Gatt’s doctrine couldn’t be simpler: it is not the government’s business to subsidise… almost anything, especially the bill for our consumption of electricity and water, which became one of the most defining moments of 2008. When things couldn’t have been any more swell for the world, as the subprime housing crash in the USA brought down the entire palace of fat bankers and stockbrokers, out comes Gatt with a €55 million hole in Enemalta’s coffers.
“The money has to come from somewhere. If we do not pay for this shortfall from raising tariffs, we will have no choice but to increase taxes. This idea that government’s money is not the people’s money is false,” Gatt declared, in what became the start of another tussle, this time with practically every union in the country.
For a brief moment in time, the unions presented a united front against the proposed tariffs. But the pettiness between the main unions soon ripped them apart once again, divided over whether to accept government’s final proposals or not. In the end, Gatt managed to secure the cost-recovery plan to pass on the full cost of energy to consumers.
“I cannot understand why nobody is agreeing with me on this,” he said in October. “I am not saying that there won’t be a shock. Of course there will be a shock but we have no choice but to recover this money.”

Bigger than Gonzi?
Gatt’s victories along the year only seemed to exalt yet again his ‘ideologia del fare’, a man intent only on getting down to business, supported by a young, loyal crew led by his head of secretariat, Emanuel Delia.
No surprises then that Gatt should be entrusted with a €60 million harbour development project for Valletta, or the private jaunt up to Paris with the prime minister to convince architect Renzo Piano to take on an €80 million project to turn Valletta into a 21st century jewel.
But Gatt’s growing importance in the Nationalist administration has now acquired a life of its own. And while his political aggressiveness may well be an asset, it’s now becoming a liability as well.
His reputation for criminalising the opposition, accusing critics of being in cahoots with Labour, has meant that chairpersons entrusted with the stewardship of government companies under his watch had a short shelf-life upon the first sign of trouble. He went on record stating he read the KullHadd newspaper on the toilet. In parliament he accused Sant of leaking allegations of hacking to MaltaToday, with the latter raising a breach of privilege.
When news came through that the Malta IT Training Services (MITTS) could have been the victim of an amateur hacking attempt, Gatt accused MaltaToday of peddling “a pack of lies”. It later transpired that almost 20,000 government usernames and passwords had been compromised due to a bungling inside MITTS. Gatt twice refused to accept the resignation of his chairman, the trusty Claudio Grech, his former head of secretariat who he later appointed chairman of both MITTS and the Malta IT Agency. Most fortuitously for Grech, who negotiated on behalf of Gatt with Dubai’s Tecom Investments for the Smart City internet village in Xghajra, he eventually became chief executive at SmartCity Malta.
Gatt’s enduring image as his government’s hard man ultimately represents what Gonzi isn’t. By having Gatt as the party strongman, he preserves his leader’s charisma for when it is really needed. During elections. Or when a government climb-down is needed after first exasperating voters and unions with the fear of new taxes, tariffs, or some bank-busting hare-brained project for a wind-operated golf course on an artificial island.
So while Gonzi goes all environmental – by suddenly going back on his decision to have a golf course in Xaghra l-Hamra; or taking MEPA reform in his hands; or heroically announcing that an “ODZ is ODZ” – Gatt is allowed to subvert these pretensions by proposing an EU-financed main road right behind the Ghadira nature reserve and the Foresta 2000 afforestation project. And he does this with the flimsiest of excuses, claiming to want to save Ghadira beach from a depleting sand basin.
You could say Gatt and Gonzi are two sides of the same Nationalist euro coin.

A dark horse
Most certainly, Gatt will always be something of a dark horse for the Nationalist government. His style of dealing with the adversaries does wonders for the party faithful. According to his Wikipedia entry, Gatt was this year dubbed as the most devil-may-care man in Malta (L-iktar bniedem alabiebu ta’ Malta) in the satirical Bla Kommixin spectacular. Not exactly the kind of proud political legacy one expects.
But that’s Gatt for you. A man whose impetuousness has characterised his persona, even when it comes to readily admit that the persistent rumours of his retirement from political life, are probably down to his own slapdash talk.
Here’s what he told MaltaToday this year, after the end of the transport strike, when asked whether it was true he was spreading the word that he won’t contest the election again.
“Probably while I was at the counting hall. You know, after all that hassle, that’s what I always say.”
MaltaToday: Do you mean it?
“I probably said it, but who knows what I’ll be doing in five years’ time?”
MT: You already have an image of being the government’s cowboy. If you won’t stand up for a vote again you’re bound to turn into a full western movie by the end of the legislature.
“What are you coming up with? I honestly planned a very calm summer, and it has been disrupted. Were it not for this strike I would be sunbathing in Marsalforn. They ruined my holiday! At least now I can go for the weekend. So leave me alone and don’t give me all this!”

Any comments?
If you wish your comments to be published in our Letters pages please click button below.
Please write a contact number and a postal address where you may be contacted.