It has not been a good few days for the ruling Nationalist administration... to put it mildly.
First, there was the announcement that former PN candidate and political appointee Marisa Micallef had crossed the Rubicon, joining the ranks of the Labour Party as a strategy advisor.
The dust from this tremor had barely settled when news also broke out that that Jason Micallef had “resigned” his post as secretary general of the Labour Party, to take up a new position as chairman of One Productions in Marsa.
Paradoxically, the resignation of a senior Labour figure translates into very bad news indeed for the Nationalist administration. Micallef is not a popular figure within the Labour Party, having borne the brunt of the flak for the humiliating electoral defeat of March 2008.
More significantly still, he was viewed almost as a hate figure among moderate, middle-class Nationalist voters... to whom his re-election as PL secretary-general by the party delegates last year had cemented the perception that Labour simply cannot ever get anything right.
Micallef’s resignation therefore robs the Nationalist party of a convenient bête noir with which to demonise the entire Labour movement ahead of the next election in 2013.
Nor have matters been helped for the PN by the choice of Stefan Zrinzo Azzopardi to take his place – for Zrinzo Azzopardi enjoys a decent reputation even among Nationalists, and his appointment is widely anticipated to “reunite” at least a few of the eternally warring factions within the Labour Party.
And to cap it all, Monday also brought with it the sudden (albeit laboriously foreshadowed) resignation of Smart City CEO Claudio Grech – a development which exposes the levels of turmoil currently reigning in a project that promised to create 5,000 new jobs, and whose aura of “ITC excellence” was endorsed by TV celebrities and newspapers editors alike.
News that Grech resigned over internal disagreement regarding the project’s direction will surely weaken one of the government’s main propaganda planks, in its drive to convince the electorate that the country is indeed on sound economic footing. It is also a direct challenge to the credibility of Investments minister Austin Gatt, who had on various occasions rubbished stories in this newspaper about internal strife within the management at Smart City – and, now that these stories have been thoroughly vindicated, has not yet uttered a word in reaction to Grech’s departure.
Of all these developments, however, there is little doubt that Marisa’s move has captured the popular imagination more than the others (somewhat ironically, as of the three, it is arguably the least significant in itself.)
It remains to be seen whether Marisa will be accepted by her new colleagues at Mile End, and above all what sort of advice she will be able to offer the PL. But in its immediate impact, Marisa’s move has thrown into sharp focus the extent of the middle class pale blue voter’s exasperation with the PN in government, and with Lawrence Gonzi in particular.
From this perspective, her defection to Labour speaks less about the ongoing changes within that party and much more about the astonishing transformation of Gonzi himself: from Malta’s most trusted politician in 2008, to a beleaguered figure struggling to maintain credibility in 2009.
Furthermore, Marisa Micallef poses a double problem for the notoriously ruthless PN spin machine.
Although it will be relevantly easy for propagandists to conduct a thorough character assassination on a person who has written so much in the past decade – mostly vitriolic attacks on Alfred Sant, whose party she now advises – the same PN will nonetheless have reason to pause before throwing any filth in Marisa’s direction.
After all, if the PN criticises Muscat’s new advisor on her past record as Housing Authority chairman – or, more likely still, for her liberal views and lifestyle – the party will open itself up to criticism for having appointed (and in a sense “created”) Marisa Micallef to begin with.
But at the end of the day, no amount of social vilification will erase the symbolic damage caused by her change of allegiance.
To the many Nationalists who simply no longer recognise their party in the “GonziPN” aberration we have witnessed since March 2008, Marisa Micallef’s decision dramatically explodes two basic perceptions that the PN has worked tirelessly and for decades to inculcate among the population at large.
The first perception – prevalent among Nationalists who remember Eddie Fenech Adami as Opposition leader – is that of the PN as the “natural party of government”, which can always be trusted “to do the right thing, even if it doesn't always deliver.
The second is that of the Labour Party as “hostile territory” to any serious self-respecting Nationalist voter... a fact which in the past has driven even liberals into the arms of a quintessentially conservative party.
The times are certainly changing.
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.
Download front page in pdf file format
All the interviews from Reporter on MaltaToday's YouTube channel.
