John Dalli has relinquished his self proclaimed role as “father confessor” to disgruntled Nationalist backbenchers, to accept Lawrence Gonzi’s irresistible bait: a prestigious and highly paid post in the European Commission.
A former finance and foreign minister who has played a major role in successive PN administrations since 1987, Dalli himself acknowledged his unofficial role as a father confessor to the seditious backbench in an interview with MaltaToday.
“I act as a father confessor to most of them… They come to me and I try to explain to them what the situation is at the present… These are good people who need to be fostered and not hit on the head,” Dalli said, outlining his new paternal role as a senior minister who is trusted by a select group of MPs.
Dalli’s bitter experience following his “forced” resignation in 2004, coupled with his past leadership ambitions, turned him into a natural reference point for a new generation of rebels disgruntled by the antics of the Gonzi clan.
Clad in the fighting spirit of the 1980s and a mainstay in Nationalist Cabinets between 1987 and 2004, Dalli suddenly found himself in the backbench after an acrimonious leadership contest in which he lost out to Lawrence Gonzi.
In the ensuing turn of events, Dalli found himself at the receiving end of a false private investigator’s report into the equipment tender for Mater Dei Hospital, and soon enough having no choice but to step down as minister. He would spend three years in the political wilderness before being rehabilitated by Gonzi himself, and then finally return to the Gonzi II administration as super-minister for social policy, health and care for the elderly.
Yet his career as father confessor turned out to be short-lived.
In a political masterstroke, the Prime Minister removed a reference point for party dissidents from the Cabinet in a way which was calculated tol appease Dalli’s political ego.
When asked by this newspaper whether his appointment was a “kick upstairs” and out of the Cabinet and the Nationalist parliamentary group,
Dalli insisted that being appointed EU Commissioner is not like being promoted to a ceremonial post, as this role entails a vaster constituency than the Maltese one and the dictates that one has to achieve certain objectives.
“Whether it’s a kick or not, I do not know,” he wryly observed, “but surely it is not a question of being given an unimportant position under the pretext that you are being honored. An EU Commissioner has an assiduous task and our lives are dependent on those people up there. It is not like going there for a long holiday.”
Ultimately, by posing as a reference point for the disgruntled backbench while concurrently showing interest in his appointment as commissioner Dalli might well have raised the stakes on the eve of the Prime Minister’s fatal decision.
Had Gonzi decided not to appoint Dalli, he risked three more years of unsettling backbench confessions.
In a clumsy attempt to deny the obvious, Gonzi yesterday made it a point to insist that John Dalli’s nomination to the European Commission was not a case of the government wanting to oust him from the Cabinet.
Yet whether getting rid of Dalli from the Cabinet was his intention is a matter which only Gonzi’s own confessor can determine, the consequences are obvious; Dalli is out of the game, the backbench has lost a potential leader and Gonzi’s position is stronger as a result.
Saying that Gonzi’s choice simply boiled down to Dalli’s competence, is like saying that Gonzi’s choice of George Abela as President was a noble attempt to unite the nation – and not an attempt to divide and confuse the opposition.
Yet by rewarding Dalli, the Prime Minister might well have opened a Pandora’s box with disgruntled backbenchers expecting a Cabinet appointment in return for their loyalty. If Dalli is worthy of an appointment, why not Robert Arrigo, Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando or Franco Debono?
Gonzi has already warned that those expecting major changes through a Cabinet reshuffle were mistaken, because Malta needed stability. But will this be enough to quench their ambitions?
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