News | Sunday, 04 January 2009

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The race for the Presidency

With 2009, the race for the appointment of Malta’s new President begins. MaltaToday traces the potential candidates and the reasons for Gonzi’s decisions

When the erstwhile prime minister Eddie Fenech Adami was proposed for President, there was widespread revulsion at Lawrence Gonzi’s choice of his predecessor. The great sense of disbelief was expressed by the most fervent of Nationalists, who saw the presidency as the role best played by anyone else but Fenech Adami, more so when he was the outgoing prime minister.
That uncomfortable memory has galvanised Gonzi into a mindset which has conditioned him into making a choice that should lead him to the least possible flak from the critics and the general population.

Recoil
At stake is the recoil of any decision he takes on the outcome of the next European Parliament elections, already touted as a lost cause for the Nationalist party which has effectively been in power since 1987.
Not being a man who rushes in taking decisions, Gonzi has started to make moves that point in the direction of Joe Borg, the European Commissioner responsible for fisheries, as the preferred candidate for President.
His candidature would be welcomed by all, and it would definitely overshadow the candidatures of Louis Galea, the former PN minister who was appointed Speaker of the House after failing to return to parliament; and former Labour minister Lino Spiteri.
Louis Galea had been a stalwart and electoral heavyweight in the Fenech Adami government, while Spiteri was a former Labour finance minister who fell out with Alfred Sant during the short-lived Labour administration of 1998-1998.
But the two individuals have a political baggage that renders them unpopular with certain elements in their own party. Louis Galea still suffers from the allegations which haunted the Auxiliary Workers Training scheme and to a lesser extent from the allegations concerning the indiscriminate award of direct orders from the Foundation for Tomorrow’s Schools. Many in the PN still believe that, while Galea might have been crucial to the party’s liberal wing, he has too much baggage to hold on to an onerous post that demands a unifying figure.
Lino Spiteri suffers a similar fate. His candidature is not supported by all the Labour MPs, namely veterans such as Alfred Sant, the former Labour leader who worked with Spiteri and feels that his resignation was instrumental in robbing Labour of its government in 1998.
Spiteri is also not appreciated by many in the Nationalist party, who remember his days as a Labour minister and cannot for once imagine that Spiteri could be President under a Nationalist administration. Though respected for his literary contribution and opinions, many Nationalists are unwilling to forgive him for having been such a prominent member of the Mintoff and Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici government.

Gonzi galvanised
Such considerations have galvanised Gonzi to go for the “acceptable” candidate.
Joe Borg, a former foreign minister, is uncontroversial, non-confrontational, somewhat colourless and a moderate. But he was a respected technocrat even though he was not renowned for being a mover and shaker in Brussels.
It would be of course very difficult for anyone to rubbish his candidature. More importantly, the Joe Borg candidature paves the way for the certain confirmation that the next candidature for Malta’s European Commissioner will be Richard Cachia Caruana, the Permanent Representative to the EU.
The present head of Malta’s representation in Brussels and a former personal assistant to Prime Minister Eddie Fenech Adami, Cachia Caruana was instrumental in negotiating Malta’s accession agreement with the EU. Ambitious, controversial, most of the time hysterical and a control freak by nature, it is no big secret that RCC has been eyeing the Commission from day one.
Yet, the decision to push RCC to the post will also consolidate the position of Gonzi’s personal advisors. Since his inclusion in the strategy group of the Nationalist party who also acts as an ‘unappointed’ advisor to the Prime Minister, RCC’s domineering position has overshadowed the role of Edgar Galea Curmi, Gonzi’s head of secretariat, who hoped for a free hand at Castille.
His appointment as Commissioner would give leeway for Galea Curmi to reassert his power role as the Prime Minister’s personal assistant.

Machiavellian
But this Machiavellian move will not be welcomed by all in the Nationalist party. Many do not feel that Richard Cachia Caruana should be Malta’s choice for European Commissioner, instead hoping for a more “acceptable” candidate for such a role.
Gonzi’s plan is to propose the post of Commissioner to John Dalli before approaching Cachia Caruana. Gonzi knows that the present Minister for Social Policy has no interest in a Brussels post, who wishes to stay closer home to be next to his family.
But Gonzi will offer him the post anyway to make it more difficult for Dalli to oppose Cachia Caruana’s eventual candidature. Relations between the two men are strained and lukewarm.
Gonzi would then officially propose the ‘job’ to Richard Cachia Caruana, who is sure to accept the position.
When the final decisions are taken, there is little doubt that there will be a number of irate candidates. Needless to say Louis Galea who is presently speaker of the house will not be a happy man.
And Lino Spiteri, who is now a regular opinion writer with The Times, will find it very difficult not to take umbrage at being denied the prestige of the post. Spiteri had been in disagreement the prime minister moving on straight away to the role of president, calling for somebody “detached from politics or whose political views are not necessarily close to the government of the day.”
Recenly however, he paid tribute to Fenech Adami’s presidency, saying that in his five years as Head of State “he has not put a foot wrong”.
“Whether there will come a time when the President will be called from outside the active political field remains to be seen. Whether that happens or not the important thing will remain that the person serving as President invariably serves the People. Dr Fenech Adami is the latest link in that unbroken chain.”

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