I’ve been an enthusiastic supporter of the Renzo Piano project from day one. For three reasons. First, because ‘City Gate’ as we shudder to remember it was wrist-slittingly ugly and cried out for some sort of radical surgery.

The risk for the Prime Minister now is that history will judge him as a man who would not take no for an answer- Mark-Anthony Falzon

Second, because I like the way the whole thing was assigned to Piano. My premise is that risk is intrinsic to most known notions of art. Architecture is inevitably a gamble and there’s always a chance that architects, no matter how glamorous and tall and bearded, will get it wrong.

But I’d much rather take my chances on Piano than stake it safe on some mediocre journeyman. He gets it wrong, we’re faced with a monumental moan and an eventual demolition job. (In any case we happen to be good at the latter, as Sliema reminds us.) He gets it right, we’re left with a gem that will take its place among the best spaces in the city. Third, because I think it’s wrong, improper, and neo-colonialist that Parliament should be relegated to an apartment in the presidential palace. If they give us a good building in a prominent place, the I-don’t-care-how-many-millions will be the best tax money we’ve ever paid. Parliament, the institution that most neatly overlaps with the notion of an autonomous people, deserves no less and nowhere else.

The bad news is that even as the slave drivers redouble their strokes 24/7 to have the thing finished as soon as possible, the Prime Minister is busy with his own masterpiece. One of irony as a fine art, as it happens.

That’s because his whole approach to the Franco Debono business is both wrong and jars painfully with the idea of a new parliament building as a symbol of representation.

The country has an acute crisis of representation, there’s no other way of putting it. If that sounds hyperbolic it’s unintentional. I don’t think there’s anything terribly outlandish or embarrassing for a government with a one-seat advantage to lose that majority. But, to date at least, lost it it has, however thick and sugary the coating on the pill.

The Prime Minister has thus far failed to minister the proper, democratic, and logical way. (No prizes for guessing what that is.) Rather, his ‘remedies’ have been as follows.

First, what we might call the ‘plover tactic’. The Little Ringed Plover is a delight of a bird which has evolved a crafty way of protecting its brood. When trouble approaches, the incubating parent will run away from its nest and dangle its wing as if to feign injury. By the time trouble catches up and the bird takes off, trouble will have forgotten all about the nest.

I know this means that it doesn’t always work for the plover. And it certainly won’t for the Prime Minister. That’s because we know there’s absolutely nothing wrong with the wing. I’m positive Lawrence Gonzi deserves and enjoys the broad support of his party councillors. He can run and dangle all he will, trouble will be left very much nosing about the nest.

The second strategy has been to wait, wait, and then wait some more for Debono to ditch his Italian suit for a sackcloth outfit and call a press conference. I wouldn’t hold my breath.

Debono’s waffle about ‘oligarchies that have to go’ is absolutely meaningless in its breadth. He has not as far as I’m aware named any oligarchs and his statements must therefore be understood as an attack on government in general. Make no mistake, Debono’s problem is big, deep-rooted, and with Gonzi.

My own view is that Debono is wrong. I don’t think that the Prime Minister is some sort of devious schemer, or that he’s hostage to a cadre of evil oligarchs. Nor do I find government’s track record at all dismal, as these things go.

All of which is quite irrelevant. The only time I had the pleasure of sitting in Parliament was when I took part in the Mini-European Assembly 20-odd years ago. I have never been, and am unlikely ever to be, elected to represent the people of this sunny Republic.

Debono on the other hand is. Whatever one might think of his motives, his unfunny porter scenes and his intriguing take on Buddhism, fact is that he deserves our full respect as an elected Member of Parliament. To think otherwise is to do a disservice to Parliament as an institution.

The Prime Minister would be doing his legacy, and democracy, a favour by forgetting who the seat belongs to and dealing with it as just that, a one-seat majority that seems to have been lost – for whatever reason.

The third method of attempted distraction is the economy, stupid. As we would indeed be if we fell for it. Gonzi’s defence that ‘the economic situation’ means that now is not the right time for an election fails to convince.

First, because the argument works both ways. Let’s say the state of the economy were excellent (as I thought we said it was, come to think of it). Gonzi would say that one shouldn’t risk destablising things by calling an early election. In other words, the state-of-the-economy reasoning is simply a sleight.

Second, it’s democracy and representation that precede the economy, not the other way round. This is not some fuddy duddy belief about the ‘nobility’ of politics over mundane money matters. What I mean is that elections should take place according to need as defined by temporal convention or political situation, not the state of the euro.

I quite honestly can’t understand why the Prime Minister has chosen to paint himself into such a tight one. It’s only a few weeks since he enjoyed the sympathy of so many well-meaning people over what happened with Debono. The risk now is that history will judge him as a man who would not take No for an answer. In politics, legacies don’t get any worse than that.

mafalzon@hotmail.com

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