Raphael Vassallo
Nationalist MEP David Casa found himself unexpectedly having to rush to Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi’s defence last Sunday, in an awkward and embarrassing moment during the extraordinary PN general council at the party headquarters in Pietà.
“The Prime Minister... will remain Prime Minister for many, many years to come,” Casa said with icy deliberation as party delegates exploded into applause... shortly after his colleague and fellow MEP candidate, Alan Deidun, astounded the same audience by indirectly suggesting that Simon Busuttil may soon replace Dr Gonzi as party leader.
Concluding his brief address to party delegates a few minutes earlier, Deidun paid tribute to his fellow contestants ahead of the June 6 vote.
“I’m not going to say anything foolish here,” he said, only seconds before contradicting himself, “but there are elements present who will be around for another four years, and others like Simon Busuttil, who – naturally, after the Prime Minister has won many more elections – I see as the next leader of the PN.”
Deidun’s may have been an innocent remark, but his political naiveté was all the more exploited by Casa’s defence of Gonzi – in times of elections, nobody talks of future leaders.
Judging by the delegates’ facial expressions, many interpreted his words as an indirect jab at Gonzi’s ailing public profile.
Furthermore, Deidun’s timing could hardly have been more inauspicious. While the erstwhile ‘green whistleblower’ (now blue) optimistically predicted many future electoral victories for Dr Gonzi, various polls suggest the PN is heading for a certain electoral drubbing.
There is another factor contributing to the growing doubts about Gonzi’s capabilities: the initiation of excessive deficit procedures against Malta by the European Commission after the budget deficit exploded to pre-accession levels.
Five years after assuming the finance portfolio in 2004, Gonzi is widely credited with reining in the deficit to within Maastricht criteria (3% of GDP). But the latest indications have inevitably dented his reputation as a “safe pair of hands”.
To compound matters further, Gonzi promised before the last election to “solve Malta’s environmental deficit” in the same way as he had earlier solved the budget deficit...
As things stand, then, only two PN candidates appear to have benefited from Deidun’s faux pas – Simon Busuttil himself, with another public endorsement as possible contender for the Gonzi throne; and David Casa, who was unexpectedly handed the perfect platform to play the part of Gonzi’s knight in shining armour.
It remains debatable, however, whether the Prime Minister himself enjoyed being rescued...
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