Confidence motions and reality

There will be much thumping on the government benches tomorrow night when the vote is taken on the motion of confidence in the government. All government MPs will vote Yes and the motion will pass without requiring another rescue casting vote by the Speaker. But Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi will not be misguided by the outcome.

For one thing, it remains true that self praise is no recommendation – he devised the motion of confidence himself. For another, he has had to swallow his bile and follow the line recommended at the outset by Nationalist MP Franco Debono when pressurised by Dr Gonzi to change his mind about abstaining on the opposition motion of no confidence in Minister Austin Gatt over the shambles of the so-called public transport reform and the consequential public outcry.

The Debono tail wagged the Gonzi dog. But that is not why the Prime Minister will not be misguided by the Yes vote outturn tomorrow. He knows, as political observers do, that a number of his MPs will be voting Yes out of loyalty to their party not to the government and because MPs do not want the government to fall and risk wipe-out in a forced early election.

The clearly observable political reality is that a number of Nationalist MPs remain unhappy with the government’s performance in one sector or another. It was not only Dr Debono who reflected deep public resentment at the transport debacle under Dr Gatt’s political responsibility. There were other Nationalist MPs who spoke up in the debate or had done so earlier.

It is extraordinary, in fact, that Eddie Fenech Adami should have attacked and written off Dr Debono the way he did in The Sunday Times yesterday. Saying judgementally that the MP had created a mess at a very delicate time for the country, the Emeritus President declared: “It’s what Franco Debono is all about…”

It is also remarkable that the former Nationalist leader and Prime Minister shares his successor, Dr Gonzi’s stand that, because the eurozone is in turmoil and the Prime Minister has to attend emergency meetings, Malta should stand still, admire him and not criticise even a true mess as took place in public transport. Even a manager of a grocer shop has to deal with multiple issues, let alone a Prime Minister.

It is hard to believe that Dr Gatt really felt satisfied that he had survived a no confidence motion because the Speaker, as parliamentary practice obliged him, cast his vote against the opposition motion. If nothing else, his pride must be badly wounded.

Nor can the Prime Minister be flying to the moon. He knows his authority has failed again. He must also realise that he was simply playing politics by not only turning Dr Gatt’s individual political responsibility into a collective position but even going on to make it a vote of confidence in him. The buck stops with me, he said, aping President Harry Truman. But he did not go on to do anything about it, exposing himself to public shaming.

Public opinion aside, after tomorrow’s vote of confidence, the Prime Minister will still have to live with the fact that a number of his MPs have aired grave dissatisfactions, which have not been properly addressed. Appointing par­liamentary assistants at the taxpayers’ expense was not enough. The rumblings are still there, no matter how much Nationalist spinners and dogs of war attack unsettled government MPs.

Unrest within its parliamentary group unsettles the government, as the Labour Party too knows from its experience in the 1996-98 period. There is no direct comparison, true. At the time, Dom Mintoff, despite the fulsome help given to him by the Nationalist opposition, failed to bring off his monumental bluff through which he hoped that within the Labour ranks there would be someone prepared to try to overthrow Prime Minister Alfred Sant.

Today, there is no Mr Mintoff. No one wants to overthrow Dr Gonzi. Not even the opposition is pressing for an early election, as Joseph Muscat showed in the crackling interview carried by The Sunday Times yesterday.

But the Prime Minister is in dire straits. He says he has a country to run. Very evidently he also has a restless parliamentary group to manage and is finding that more than a handful to the extent that Dr Fenech Adami, instead of staying above the fray as venerable former Presidents tend to do, is mobilised or is personally impelled to brusquely intervene to lend Dr Gonzi his grim assistance.

The real situation will not change after Nationalist MPs vote on tomorrow’s confidence motion and the desk-thumping that will greet the result. Reality is not so easily glossed over.