A political party, any political party, must have a raison d’être for its existence. It has to have an ideology, principles, philosophies, values and other basic tenets that have to be managed and administered in an applied direction to fulfill the reasons for its existence.
Goodbye once and for all to the religione joker card- Joe Farrugia
The cornerstone of the Nationalist Party’s values has, ever since its inception, been touted as pro patria et religione, for God and country or for the nation and its religion, interpret it as you will. As a prelude to the last election, its name had to be spin-doctored and slightly amended to GonziPN, in reaction to a growing resentment against a rising tide of opposition to a continued Nationalist-led government for various reasons that have been fully documented and need not be regurgitated. The spin basis was that of overriding this growing resentment by propagating the profile of party leader Lawrence Gonzi, presented as a man with a safe pair of hands to continue guiding the country in the right direction.
This undoubtedly aided the ailing party to scrape home at the polls by the skin of its teeth with a majority of 1,580 first-count votes, the most slender of margins, yielding a 35-34 seat ratio in Parliament.
Hardly had the ink dried on the parchment that Dr Gonzi signed when he was sworn in as Prime Minister when further devastating cracks began to appear in a façade that had already been experiencing a rapid rate of crumble.
The largest crack was that of a hardcore sector representing a more liberal faction of the PN, opposed by a further hardcore faction representing the right-wing credentials, with the Prime Minister trying to establish a foot on one saddle and another foot on another.
As horse-riding persons aptly know, riding two horses thus may well result in an enormous crash in which the unfortunate middle rider caves in. This is the balancing act that Dr Gonzi has been trying to perform at the head of a party that former Prime Minister Dom Mintoff once aptly designated as “a strange political animal”. Following the internal volcanic ramblings resultant from Cabinet selection and the obvious disgruntlement of another steadfast core that had aspired to ministerial status, the first torpedo to hit the Maltese electorate was the astronomic rise of domestic and industrial electricity rates.
As explosive and unpopular as this was, it did not however shake the core fibre of GonziPN. That strike was made by Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando when he presented his Private Member’s Bill to introduce divorce legislation, a real and lethal missile that threatens to blow the GonziPN ship out of the water once and for all.
Why?
Examine the facts. First, the patria side of this “strange political animal”. Slowly but surely, in successive legislatures, the PN has been selling off the country’s assets into foreign hands. Mid-Med Bank, Sea Malta, Malta Drydocks, public transport and, now, Air Malta, which totters on the brink as the next item to be swallowed up or, even worse, disappear!
The much-vaunted SmartCity project remains a stillborn duck that has not been taken out of the water.
Disparaging remarks have been passed by some Cabinet ministers, rubbishing Maltese management ability, thus continuing the doses of patria bashing.
The latest in the saga is the total Arriva fiasco. The greater the Administration’s effort to present this as the face of a new and modern Malta, the greater has been the flop.
All public transport needed was a strong administration to induce Maltese investors to guarantee a fleet of new, small and efficient minibuses, using prudent hub utility on a select number of routes and new personnel. Instead, we have had to bring in a foreign company to teach Maltese drivers to say “please” and “thank you” because, apparently, that was beyond Maltese management ability.
We have yet to see what will happen to Air Malta.
With successive Nationalist administrations having blown away the patria pillar by bringing in every foreign Tom, Dick and Harry available there was always the religione pillar to hang on to, that everlasting sure-fire guarantee that, come what may, would, at the end of the day, be the ultimate joker card to be played, guaranteed to procure success.
In stepped Dr Pullicino Orlando to further break an already badly splintered Administration into further fragments. The GonziPN Administration floundered on this rock right from the very start, making a whole pig’s ear of the entire process.
The Bill is now an Act and, therefore, a law and it will go down in history that divorce in Malta was introduced by a PN Administration! Goodbye once and for all to the religione joker card.
What else remains for the GonziPN to cling to? A load of public projects are in the pipeline: roads, the new City Gate and all the peripheral garnishing. All of these will, undoubtedly, be inaugurated in a spectacular flurry of events on the eve of the next election.
Roman emperor Nero did not actually play the harp while Rome burnt around him. However, one gets the feeling that Dr Gonzi is definitely playing this instrument as Malta collapses around him, the GonziPN and the PN in general.
Joefarrugiafarell@gmail.com
Mr Farrugia is a Labour Party candidate.