Ministers remain accountable for state enterprises. They set policy and have to know what is going on. Whether that means it should be necessary to empower the Minister of Finance - as Bill Number 44, still in the committee stage provides - to exercise direct control of certain aspects of state enterprise is another matter. But the Investments Minister and the Prime Minister have to speak out in public on state enterprise when it is necessary to do so.
Monday was one such occasion. When Marlene Mizzi left the board of Sea Malta she did not abandon ship. She was out of synch with the government's plans for the company. The point had arrived when she felt the honourable thing to do was to leave. She explained why, publicly, and strongly. The Prime Minister, and the Investments Minister, had to react, also publicly, and no less strongly.
Strongly, though, should not have translated into the calculated spin whereby the Prime Minister's letter of acceptance of Ms Mizzi's departure several times aligned her with the opposition and the criticism that it has been making. That will be a defining factor that, I believe, will blight the public perception of Lawrence Gonzi and return to haunt him.
Anyone who mistook Dr Gonzi for a softie never really knew him. As his blurb pointed out in the contest to succeed Eddie Fenech Adami, as Speaker he had taken tough measures, against tough people. He had been firm as PN deputy leader and deputy Prime Minister. In his first months as PM he could be termed soft only in that he retained all of the hands his predecessor had placed on the Cabinet deck, though the ship of state had to sail into different waters.
While being no softie, Dr Gonzi is very widely regarded as a nice and decent politician. Labour leader Alfred Sant, who owes it to no Nationalist not to wear brass knuckles, since the PN has always done so in his regard, has never attacked the Nationalist leader personally.
There was nothing nice in Dr Gonzi's reply to Ms Mizzi. He showed he felt this lady was for burning. He acknowledged her good services to Sea Malta, gracefully so once or twice. Sarcasm dripped from other references to her years at the helm. These interlaced the letter as frequently as it juxtapositioned her with the opposition.
That was not just a strong reply to a strong resignation letter. The PM's letter resembled an exercise in professional-character assassination. It set out to do far more than state the government's stand over Sea Malta. The Prime Minister went for Ms Mizzi's professional jugular. "In spite of your eminent efforts," he sneered at Ms Mizzi, since 1997 (when she was appointed) chairman, Sea Malta sustained pre-tax losses of Lm3.6 million.
Just in case anyone had missed the PM's financial slur, Minister Austin Gatt poured further ridicule on Ms Mizzi on Tuesday. The minister said that she had proposed a Lm3 million commercial investment into the company which would have yielded Lm165 profit after four years. That was vintage Austin Gatt style, one factor why he is a formidable politician in a Cabinet that boasts even fewer green bottles than usual.
The bitter taste left by the PM's acceptance letter was not at all Lawrence Gonzi style. I would not conclude that, because I found it far less than decent in parts, Dr Gonzi has turned into a horror politician. He demonstrated unambiguously that he has become much more political, not quite in the nicer sense, nor in a manner that enhances his image.
A Prime Minister cannot smile benignly all the time. To be grim when required must be part of his make-up. He has to be resolute, always. There will be times when he has to wield his first-among-equals power in the Cabinet more mercilessly than Dr Gonzi seems to have done so far.
Keel-hauling someone who has served faithfully in a difficult enterprise, as Ms Mizzi has done at Sea Malta, is not a necessary or admirable part of a Prime Minister's role. Storming the way he did at the former Sea Malta chairman, the PM went overboard.
Tomorrow: Island interest overboard