Bag of misery for Prime Minister

That was the week that was for Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi. It was a massive symbol of the depths to which the Nationalist Administration has plummeted. Will it also prove to be a harbinger of things to come? The answer will be yes if the government continues to handle problems and criticism the way the responsible minister is handling Enemalta.

The corporation has been hauled over the rack for months by Labour MP Evarist Bartolo. He pegged his criticism and revelations on the way Enemalta went about selecting the supplier of the equipment for the coming extension of the Delimara power station. It was clear that good sources were supplying Mr Bartolo with inside information. Labour's most astute politician and political writer, the MP made devastating use of the pile of material he dug up. Initially he was met with silence. Soon, Enemalta was squirming uncomfortably. Its minister does not squirm but he was not comfortable either.

Last week, after much implicit resistance, Enemalta placed on its website a pre-2008 election report prepared in case the contest would bring about a change of minister. The report proved right all that Mr Bartolo had been saying. Aside from its technical content it had at least one telling political point: management preferred to see less day-to-day political interference.

The minister's reply could not have been weaker. He declared that, if making policy and overseeing its implementation was interference, he had no regrets. The unmistakable Gattian style and tone did not hide the fact that the minister was scrambling to divert the flak. The Enemalta management had specifically referred to day-to-day interference not to policy making.

That was not the end of the affair. Having been forced to publish the erstwhile confidential report that was done with parts of it blocked out. The ruse did not fool this newspaper, which ferreted out the blocked parts and published them. They were not of a commercial nature, as the publishers of the report lamely claimed. They were a crass attempt at a cover up. Nakedness is not that easily camouflaged.

To top it all, writing about problems faced by the business community, the chairman of the Chamber of Commerce, Enterprise and Industry, Helga Ellul, referred to Enemalta as an inefficient monopoly with a weak regulator. That barb, the Prime Minister will note, was in a context totally unrelated to the political tidal wave agitated by Mr Bartolo (competitiveness) and thereby all the more damning.

Then there was the Fairmount debacle report. The Malta Shipyard massive losses on the two conversion contracts were not, after all, the fault of the much-reviled yard workers. The contracts were doomed to failure as soon as they were signed. Again, the responsible minister reacted not with due tact and a touch of humility but by claiming that the report proved his theory that the yard was not up to jobs that had best be left to the private sector. That, surely, was not the point. And that obvious avoided fact pushed the Gonzi government deeper in the water.

At the end of the week came the last straw. A former Nationalist candidate, incisive anti-Labour columnist and a personal fan of the Prime Minister, Marisa Micallef, accepted an offer by the Opposition Leader to operate for the Labour Party. She had been signalling recently that she was no longer comfortable with the Nationalists and the way they bark and bite, referring to some of them as rottweilers. But few expected her not only to jump the Nationalist ship but also to clamber on the Labour bandwagon.

Lawrence Gonzi will surely want to forget this past week. At least he can tell himself that he delivered a good speech at the United Nations. But the sum total of the seven days is a bag of misery for him. The Labour opposition has the opportunity to have a ball now that the House of Representatives will start meeting again.