Tribute to Lawrence Gonzi

It is only fitting that I should give brief tribute to Lawrence Gonzi now that the time has come for him to leave the political stage.

History will record that he was perhaps one of the better Prime Ministers to have the honour to lead the country, rising head and shoulders above his puny detractors and bitter enemies. If you want a monument to the man, look around you, but use the International Monetary Fund’s eyes, the view from which was reported on Wednesday, using words such as resilience and strength with reference to our economy.

If you want a monument to Lawrence Gonzi, look around you

Gonzi was let down by his failure to ensure that the political side of his mission, the side where he needed support but got betrayal, was shorn up by his party in advance of the perfect storm that from the day after the 2008 victory threatened to engulf him. The cruelty of realpolitik is such that, in the short term, it is for this that he will be remembered and it is basically for this that he got whipped in the polls.

Such is life, I suppose. When you think, for instance, that one of the major gripes of the malcontents revolved around, of all things, Renzo Piano’s open-air performance space, which they chose to dub “the roofless theatre”, you realise how shallow these people are.

This shallowness is brought into sharp relief now that Piano, for one of whose buildings most metropolises would kill, appears to have convinced the Prime Minister partially (or is that completely?) to submerge the Triton Fountain.

By their own lights (not by mine), the self-appointed architectural nonpareils who were so eager to slam Piano pre-March should have come out screeching like harridans but instead we got not a peep from them.

I suppose many of them don’t want to prejudice their chances to snaffle the plum or two that might yet be lobbed in their general direction now that Labour have been installed in government.

A deafening silence came from other directions at other measures, directions that, in the past, threatened to bring down the government at every imagined slight and eventually, when it was irrelevant, did just that. Minister Manwel Mallia’s ‘Super Ministry’ brings together responsibilities that, when concentrated in Carm Mifsud Bonnici’s hands, caused a Nationalist MP, in whose gift lay the survival of the government (through no merit other than a coincidental one-seat majority), to have major conniptions.

Franco Debono, now a nonentity were it not for the inappropriate task Labour has given him, seems troubled not at all by that which formerly caused him such heartache.

Perhaps this is because he now considers himself to be among friends, and among friends all is forgiven.

Minister George Vella, in whose favour the elasticity of the Code of Ministerial Ethics is stretched as much to breaking point as it already has been for others, is one such kindred spirit, being apparently of the opinion, as is Debono, that it’s high time for the media to be measured for a yoke. Not that some segments of the media need this insofar as concerns Labour but I assume Minister Vella wasn’t referring to them in the House.

You can understand why Vella, a Labour traditionalist whose desire to control his environment extends to banning mobile phones in his presence, would prefer it if the media were to ignore him and his little foibles, the cold light of publicity being rather merciless if it is trained on you.

Even the President’s Office is getting a dose of this, with the story about the Community Chest Fund’s methods of dispensing largesse being called into question.

Back in the day, the Office of the President was, to a greater or lesser extent, immune from media scrutiny. Whether this was a good thing or not is debatable but the fact remains that stories such as this, with (abysmally written, incidentally) copies of minutes of meetings at which the President was present, reporting what he said and suggested, circulating freely, leaked apparently by someone who wanted the story to come out, never came out before.

The question is whether there were any such stories that should have come out but didn’t. I have no information that there were; perhaps the more investigative segments of the media could divert themselves from Dalligate for a minute or two and enlighten us.

On Saturday, we attended a very creditable performance of Karl Jenkins’ The Peacemakers, conducted by the great man himself. The performers, and the venue, acquitted themselves superbly, but the MCC wasn’t full, by a long shot, which continues to shoot enormous holes in the already inane roofless-theatre gripes to which I referred earlier. None of the whingers were spotted at the MCC on Saturday, incidentally.

Sunday evening saw us at St George’s Basilica (in Gozo) for a very enjoyable conclusion to the Notte Gozitana Lejlet Lapsi events by the Malta Youth Orchestra under the baton of Joseph Vella.

My obligation, onerous as it is, to make non-intellectual nourishment recommendations was also catered (a pun my word, sorry for that) for on Wednesday when we had a rather decent meal at Don Serafino Al Molo in Portomaso, parking no problem and quality likewise.

imbocca@gmail.com

www.timesofmalta.com/articles/author/20