Who, then, will succeed Lawrence Gonzi as leader of the Nationalist Party? The question is neither hypothetical nor immediate. The time must come. My view is that it will happen within three years, depending on the outcome of the next general election.

If the Nationalists win, Lawrence Gonzi, I believe, will stay on as Prime Minister for another two years. He will give the party ample time to elect a successor, and will give him adequate time to settle in as prime minister. Should the PN lose the election, Dr Gonzi will give way in around six months, once the process of succession has taken place within the PN.

So, is he going to anoint a successor? Has he already done that by personally appointing Simon Busuttil to clear up the mess the government created by not listening to the people? The mess admission was made by the PM in his unusually carefully written address to the PN machine, and underscored by Dr Busuttil in a loaded interview with Herman Grech of The Sunday Times yesterday.

Many think so. I don’t. The current PN leader knows there is a hard job to be done. His party polls, never mind public ones, will be telling him the PN is running second to Labour and he personally to Opposition Leader Joseph Muscat. With little more than a year to go before a general election must be held, he has to take corrective action.

And he did. First came the reversal of part of the secretive, as Dr Busuttil put it yesterday, and hugely unpopular ministerial pay increase. Then came the belated admission that the government has not been listening to the people. Quickly followed by a somersault on water and electricity tariffs. The government, said the Finance Minister, will not be raising them despite Standard and Poor’s suggestion as it downgraded Enemalta’s rating. The government has “social responsibilities”.

That is a total reversal of government policy, which was based on full cost recovery plus helping a limited number of social cases. It confirms the Prime Minister’s decision to change course. Appointing Dr Busuttil to listen was part of that. Both of them have a lot to listen to.

A man in obvious great pain told me yesterday that he had gone to Mater Dei Hospital, been examined and referred for an appointment – which was fixed for him for December! Carers of hundreds of disabled persons helped by the Inspire Foundation are finding it hard to believe that the government is not financing therapies like it used to do.

There are thousands of complaints that have been ignored.

At long last Dr Gonzi wants them addressed. For the wrong reason certainly. They need to be addressed out of a sense of justice, of what the people deserve from the administration.

Not out of political consideration. But that is the way the political game is played.

The PM chose Dr Busuttil to do it, implicitly giving him a head start on other eventual contenders for the PN leadership. Yet that followed another significant action by him. A few weeks ago, out of the blue the Prime Minister raised to ministerial status Jason Azzopardi, Mario de Marco and Chris Said. The three men, like Simon Busuttil all in their early or middle forties, can all be considered as potential contenders to succeed Dr Gonzi when the time comes.

The Prime Minister and leader of the Nationalist Party is playing a careful “double game”. He is dealing with his present political difficulties – take a bow, Simon. And he is beefing up his Cabinet – your turn Jason, Mario and Chris. There is probably also another angle to it.

Dr Gonzi knows that the two main contenders to succeed him, even if they have not indicated so themselves, are Dr de Marco and Dr Busuttil.

He probably wants to widen the field somewhat, for the sake of competition and also to prepare the ground for a possible compromise candidate.

All hypothetical, one might say. Yet all very, very possible.

One might also ask whether it is right for Dr Gonzi to spend thinking-time on a succession policy when he has a country to run. It certainly is not wrong. Politicians, in office or in opposition, are first and foremost just that. If they don’t play politics, they are on the wrong stage.

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