News that GRTU director general Vince Farrugia has been approached to contest the MEP elections on behalf of the Nationalist Party will certainly raise eyebrows among those who have closely followed the industry lobbyist’s lengthy career.
Naturally, no one can deny that political parties are free to invite whomsoever they please to contest on their behalf; and that by the same token, the individuals remain free to accept or turn down the invitation as they see fit.
But in his official role as chief spokesman for Malta’s SMEs – and as an occasional newspaper contributor in his own right – Farrugia has earned himself something of a reputation for outspokenness when it comes to criticising the Nationalist administration... which he once famously described as “yesterday’s men”.
In fact, the full list of diatribes and invectives uttered by Farrugia with regard to the present government would probably fill an entire newspaper... and in a sense, it is precisely for this reason that his proposed nomination as a PN candidate should really come as no surprise at all.
For while the initiative may appear paradoxical at a glance, it always makes a lot of political sense to court and reward one’s own sternest critics. And from this perspective, it is hard to shake off the impression that the choice of Vince Farrugia is directed more by a concern with buying his silence, than with what Mr Farrugia himself might be able to contribute as an MEP.
There may be other political motives, too: for instance, to “counterbalance” certain high profile Labour candidates from outside the political sphere... among them, economist Edward Scicluna and former Sea Malta chairman Marlene Mizzi.
Besides, the Nationalist Party is no doubt also conscious that – after almost 20 years of uninterrupted power – it has inevitably cultivated the unwelcome aura of an institution “for insiders only”... as evidenced by its constant habit of hand-picking individuals for public posts on the strength of their loyalty to the party.
Certainly, having Vince Farrugia on the PN’s euro-ticket would greatly enhance the Nationalist Party’s desire to be perceived as a much broader church than is so often projected. But it must also be said that this incursion of politics into the traditionally non-political sphere also brings with it certain pitfalls: not least, the gradual erosion of independent territory, in a society which is increasingly finding it difficult to think in terms other than “Nationalist” or “Labour”.
Even before news of Farrugia considering a PN ticket, the PL’s courting of Edward Scicluna had been foreshadowed by Finance Minister Tonio Fenech, who told our sister paper Illum that he saw Scicluna as “leaning more towards Labour” in his work as an economist.
Scicluna’s subsequent candidature appears to have validated Fenech’s original point, but the real issue at stake is another: i.e., that it is fast becoming impossible to field oneself as an “independent” observer, in a scenario where any critic of government policy is automatically labelled as having a partisan agenda.
And yet, Malta sorely needs independent observers: not just in economics, but also in the media, where – for much the same reasons – news reporting and opinion-writing are all too often interpreted along diametrically opposed lines, according to one’s own personal political views.
For example, the recent incident in which a gunman wounded 13 people at the Mqabba PN club, was almost immediately diverted into claims and counter-claims regarding the accused’s own political leanings... as though the political parties were only interested in distancing themselves from the crime, and attributing it instead to a member of their rival organisation.
The same dynamic repeats itself in virtually all spheres of life. In the last election we saw how popular icons from traditionally non-political sports and music – footballer Michael Mifsud being the best example – were “appropriated” for the purposes of an election campaign. Like Vince Farrugia, they are of course free to associate themselves with whichever cause they prefer. But at the same time, there seems to be precious little of Malta’s character which has not somehow been compromised through exposure to this endless political feud.
The most serious impact of the status quo is that Malta is now deprived of any reliable source of objectivity. Interestingly enough, the immediate example also involves the MEP elections: in particular, the former Malta EU Information Centre, which was funded by public money to provide unbiased information ahead of the EU referendum, but which ended up creating a super candidate to corner at least one of the five available seats for the Nationalist Party.
This is not to detract from Dr Simon Busuttil’s otherwise laudable career as an MEP: but it was (and still is) a pity that a supposedly neutral observer, supplying supposedly neutral information from a supposedly neutral bureau such as MiC, should have turned out with hindsight not to be neutral at all.
Bit by bit, it seems the entire country is slowly going the same way: being annexed by its own political class, and then used (and often disposed of afterwards) for purely political ends.
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an independent voice News that GRTU director general Vince Farrugia has been approached to contest the MEP elections on behalf of the Nationalist Party will certainly raise eyebrows among those who have closely followed the industry lobbyist’s lengthy career...>>
