Yet again, it’s Mr Fix-it to the rescue

I must confess that Alfred Sant’s predicament way back in 1998 had earned my furtive sympathy. Here was a Prime Minister who was trying to govern after a hard won electoral victory being pilloried for no apparent logical reason by one of his backbenchers, a former leader of his own party to boot.

Consistently taking up the role of an indispensable Mr Fix-it is exactly how a Prime Minister should not govern- Michael Falzon

In the end, Sant had to call it a day and ask for a fresh mandate rather than accept being constantly blackmailed. That he did not get his fresh mandate was more the result of his having failed the electorate in more ways than one, rather than because the electorate thought that Mintoff did the right thing.

There is a parallel of sorts in the situation in which Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi has found himself as a result of the antics of one of his backbenchers – a new boy on the block rather than a former leader.

What is even more intriguing is the fact that these antics provoked a wave of sympathy for the Prime Minister, something that has apparently not registered in the mind of the rebel MP.

Ironically, his stance did not go well with the same Nationalist supporters who had been grumbling and complaining about the performance of Gonzi’s government. They ended up sympathising with the Prime Minister. Nobody likes to see anyone throw a spanner in the works – let alone one who is considered to be on ‘our side’.

It is a pity that after having gone through such awkward circumstances and prevailed, the Prime Minister decided to score an own goal. I refer to the way he then decided to tackle the public transport issue, after having insisted in publicly expressing his full confidence in the responsible minister.

The Prime Minister’s decision to head a task force to oversee the public transport reform is not just an admission of the way this reform turned out to be a miserable failure and that something had to be done about it. It also rests on two basic assumptions: There is no one in Malta, except for the Prime Minister, capable of overseeing the reform and see it through until it is satisfactory; the Prime Minister has enough time on his hands to be able to do this overseeing personally.

Both assumptions are hopelessly absurd – hence the decision must be the wrong one.

Unfortunately, the idea that the Prime Minister’s personal intervention can lead to the solution of some nagging problem has become a hallmark of the Gonzi administration.

When he became Prime Minister, Gonzi also took over the responsibilities of the Finance Ministry besides personally and directly assuming the responsibility of ensuring that Mater Dei Hospital is completed within a specific time-frame and a specific budget.

When the Malta Environment and Planning Authority, under George Pullicino, made a mess of the long-awaited local plans and issued unexplainable building permits, the Prime Minister made an electoral promise to the effect that he will take Mepa under his wing and reform it. To put it mildly, the success of this endeavour is suspect, and the Prime Minister actually ended up passing this particular buck to a parliamentary secretary in his office.

One wonders who is in charge of the Prime Minister’s time management and who advised him to take this course of action in the case of the public transport task force. If my guess is right, he is in charge of his own time management and no one advises him about it. No one, it seems, warns him about the pitfalls inherent in his chosen course of action, pitfalls that he probably overlooks but that are so evident to an objective observer looking at things from a distance.

I was under the impression that the Prime Minister had many more things to do than running the bus service. In his defence some argue that the public transport debacle could prove to be a serious electoral setback, but I doubt it.

Others think that Arriva’s complaints about traffic congestion provoked Transport Malta to point fingers at the police and this administration’s incredible lack of grip on the police force has become legendary: hence the need for Gonzi’s intervention.

The solution to these problems seems to rest on the Prime Minister summoning the Commissioner of Police and the head of the Armed Forces to help him run the bus schedule. The latter, we are told, is there to ensure that our military aircraft are “circling overhead to monitor traffic flow and identify bus routes with problems”. I cannot decide whether this is a tragic farce or a farcical tragedy.

Consistently taking up the role of an indispensable Mr Fix-it is exactly how a prime minister should not govern. It also indicates that the Prime Minister is being constantly let down by the people he has chosen as his advisers.

As a PN supporter friend of mine – who was as livid at Franco Debono’s antics as at the task force decision – told me: as Prime Minister, Gonzi should be despatching ministers, not buses!

micfal@maltanet.net