If in recent months there has been talk of ‘disgruntlement’ on the Nationalist backbench, the picture that now emerges appears to be one of open rebellion.
Matters have now clearly reached a head, with one previously tacit MP – Floriana doctor Jean-Pierre Farrugia – openly accusing his own government of exclusionism, detachment from popular concerns, as well as “conflicts of interest” in the proposed healthcare reform.
In an email circulated among the PN parliamentary group this week, Farrugia even threatened to withhold his vote on a forthcoming primary healthcare reform bill: a move that would effectively paralyse the present government, which – as was made painfully apparent by Franco Debono’s antics last December – clings precariously to power by a single seat majority.
Asked specifically whether he intends to force an early election, Farrugia told this newspaper that: “it is not I who will bring the government down, but the pig headedness that seems to have taken Castille by storm.” However, this view is to say the least debatable.
Like other Nationalist MPs to have criticised their Prime Minister of late, Farrugia may conceivably have a point when he warns that the proposed reform would drive his party too far to the right (unconsciously echoing Mintoff’s celebrated complaint in 1997, that the MLP had ‘lost its social soul’ under Alfred Sant).
But his timing was at best inauspicious. Farrugia in fact chose to fire his broadside barely a day after Gonzi announced his much-awaited Cabinet reshuffle last Wednesday – a reshuffle that produced no new faces in the Cabinet, and which Farrugia himself described as ‘the last straw’ that broke the proverbial camel’s back.
Readers will no doubt judge for themselves whether this ‘revolt’ is truly rooted in an ideological variance of the kind suggested by Farrugia (and earlier by Debono), or merely occasioned by frustration and disgruntlement at having been left out in the cold.
One thing, however, is certain. The deterioration in relations between Prime Minister and backbenchers is now all but irreversible, and from this point on Gonzi faces an uphill struggle just to survive until the next scheduled election in 2013 (let alone to win that election on behalf of the PN).
But there are cautionary lessons for both sides of this increasingly irreconcilable divide. Lawrence Gonzi himself should by now be ruing several of his own past decisions: not least, that of remodelling the PN after his own image and likeness ahead of the 2008 election.
One can argue that other causes of the PN’s present turmoil – above all, the ‘exclusivity’ claim – also arise directly from that same strategic gambit. From the backbencher’s perspective, therefore, Gonzi can be said to have supplanted the ‘populist’, centrist Nationalist Party (as bequeathed to him by Eddie Fenech Adami) with a rebranded, exclusive version called ‘GonziPN’. But this is at best only part of the story.
Looking at the bigger picture, one can also discern a double-edged sword that may in future haunt the same backbenchers currently leading the revolt. For it seems that Gonzi is not the only one to have detached himself too completely from the man in the street. Much the same could be said for the backbenchers themselves, who appear to have overlooked the undeniable fact that Nationalist voters – regardless of the extent of their disgruntlement with the present administration – will always prefer a Nationalist government to a Labour one.
Just as one can talk of a “tipping point” of maladministration that inevitably turned Gonzi’s former allies against him, there is also a tipping point of public opinion that could conceivably turn Nationalist voters against their more unruly representatives in Parliament.
True, some of these same MPs may have struck a chord with various sections of the electorate on individual issues: Franco Debono with Nationalists from the South, for instance; Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando with opponents of the St John’s project; or Jean-Pierre Farrugia with the growing underbelly of Nationalists who feel they are slipping below the poverty line. But the fact that there is now a palpable threat to the survival of Gonzi’s government will no doubt elicit a feeling of deep disquietude among even the most disillusioned of Nationalist voters.
It remains to be seen how long this apparently unstable situation can last, before the scales are tipped one way or the other.
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