Labour leader Joseph Muscat ended a wide-ranging interview with The Sunday Times on a high note, yesterday. The interviewer said that some have suggested it’s looking increasingly likely that this (coming) election will be a presidential election: Gonzi vs Muscat.
“How would you beat him,” Dr Muscat was asked.
The prompt reply was that it will be an election of ideas. It will be an election between someone who talks about the future against someone who only thinks about the past. “I plan to talk about the future,” concluded the Labour leader.
It certainly behoves him to put it that way. Elections should be about how to run the country over the next five years, though an eye on past performance is inevitable. The Nationalists are stretching that inevitability to breaking point.
Their main plank is, once again, the fear-factor they squeeze out of the Dom Mintoff-Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici years in office in the 1970s and 1980s.
Dr Muscat looks to the future, to the kernel of what politics should be all about – ideas for the years ahead. One cannot keep living in and talking about the past. Which makes the opposition’s motion against Richard Cachia Caruana, to be closed with a parliamentary vote today, all the more surprising.
The motion is not about Mr Cachia Caruana’s continuing role as a guru of the Nationalist Party, a role he has played for 25 years.
That role is fair meat for political appraisal and criticism but not such to justify a parliamentary motion about it. Cogs in party machines are not answerable to Parliament.
The motion is about the man’s role as a main representative of the government, heading Malta’s relationship with the European Union. It is about the island’s membership of the Partnership for Peace and something that allegedly happened years ago.
To me, it remains mystifying that the Labour opposition chose to raise and debate the allegation now, in a context of little interest to the nation as a whole and even less so to the movement Dr Muscat is trying to build to carry him to victory when the election is held.
It contradicts the Labour leader’s well-put projection that he is a man of ideas with a visionary eye. In itself, the motion is misplaced. It relates to government policy, not to any policy dreamed up by a representative individual. It would be a fine mess indeed if the country’s ambassadors were personally held to account before the House of Representatives in censure motions.
It is the executive politicians who make and are responsible for policy. They are accountable.
It is besides the point that the core of the allegations against Mr Cachia Caruana were denied by the Prime Minister. The principle involved is one of accountability; as Labour argued in the parallel case of Carmelo Mifsud Bonnici, ministers are ultimately accountable.
The hours spent in committee and today’s debate are, to my mind, wasted time and effort.
They are a waste of both parliamentary and political time, including irrelevant questions such as how much Dr Cachia Caruana is paid. What would have been relevant, once the ambassador had been hauled before the House committee, was to ask his views on succession planning, what is he advising and preparing in that regard.
Mr Cachia Caruana has built a strong machine out of the resources available to him to tackle the extensive task of representation in the EU. What happens when his role ends? My understanding is that he has a very good non-political number two. As an MP, I would have wanted to be ascertained of that.
Mr Cachia Caruana cannot be there forever, even should the Nationalists retain office.
That is talk for the future which, no doubt, Dr Muscat is thinking about. Spending so much time incorrectly about the past is not only a contradiction, it plays into the hands of the Nationalist spin doctors.