It is virtually axiomatic that senior managers do not invoke the majesty of the Industrial Tribunal when their jobs find themselves on the line and they are asked not to let the door hit them on the way out.

There are various reasons for this, not the least of which is the fact that members of senior management are expected to conduct themselves differently from the rank and file.

If they lose the confidence of their MD, the board or chairman, depending on the way the company is structured, they go, with dignity and, if the circumstances justify it, with a payment to ease the transition.

Sometimes, if the circumstances do not justify it, there is no payment, simply an exit, quick and abrupt, from whence the picturesque expression ‘falling on one’s sword’.

On occasion, it is not only for one’s own defaults that one takes responsibility: if it happened on your watch, you’re the one who has to deploy the sword, pointy-end towards you.

That is, of course, unless you are England’s manager or Malta’s minister for education, the latter of whom seems to think that it’s all fine and dandy to blame his underlings for the total mess made of the Skolasajf initiative. “Don’t blame me, I’m only the minister,” seems to be Evarist Bartolo’s motto, though one is being a tad unfair in singling him out, poor lamb, when many of the rest of the Cabinet, not to mention the highest of the high panjandra himself, El Primero Ministro, seem to think they’re coated with Teflon(R).

Could Dalli’s advisers do him a big favour and stop him from making ludicours allegations about who is in bed with whom

In other words, nothing sticks to them, no total messes with public transport, no rapes of the environment, no chiefs of staff acting like total despots, no privatisations of Enemalta, no clandestine deals with China, no nuffink, in fact.

Taking responsibility for one’s own actions, or for those of one’s subordinates, is not often perceived to be a predominant trait of many who live south of Rome (I’m being charitable). Politicians doing that little thing are rare too, though honourably Chris Said had done it, and returned to office as soon as the air was cleared, quite rightly.

Political office, just to continue labouring the point (those of you who get this sort of thing hardly need me to spell it out, but some do) is not subject to the same rules as normal employment.

Even in ‘normal’ employment, people near the top live at the pleasure of their masters, so can you imagine how much more emphatically this is the case when you inhabit the rarefied air of top political office? If you want an indication of how these things should be handled, give consideration to what happens when a minister of the crown is alleged to have been found ‘playing away he usually stands at the door of his house, flanked by his fragrant wife and, if available, some adorable offspring and tells the press that he has sent his resignation to the prime minister in order to ensure that the government is not embarrassed while he shows the world that he is a paragon of all virtues.

Generally, that is a precursor to the dear fellow slinking off into the sunset, there to be divorced from his long-suffering wife and reviled by his children, but you get my point? Just to belabour it, I’m not saying that John Dalli has been unfaithful to his wife.

It is this point that seems to have escaped Dalli completely and utterly:he was not employed as a doorkeeper to the gilded cage to which he – poor man – tells us he was banished by the conspiracy GonziPN/Barroso/Evil Click of Blokkers. Dalli was at the political apex of Europe, one of the anointed few out of the back of whose necks the sun shines, illuminating the lives of us poor mortals down here at the foothills, bathing us with his sublime light.

Let me make an incidental personal point here: I do not form part of the evil click to which Dalli sometimes refers in the course of his wide-ranging and eclectic defence of his actions/attack on José Manuel Barroso and GonziPN. If Dalli says I have been in some way, now or in the past, directed to attack him or to hound him, he is stating a stark untruth. The extent to which Dalli is worried about being characterised as not telling the truth is, of course, subject to some debate.

Given Dalli’s position, the only way for him to react when faced with the position put to him by Barroso was to resign ‘in order to be able to defend himself’ calmly and with dignity. Barroso, whose version of events I choose to find credible in the extreme, was forced to take a political decision by the OLAF report placed before him.

Whether the report was correct or not is not germane to the issue. Barroso had to protect the European Commission from the fallout of it becoming known, as it now has, that one of its members had had meetings with tobacco lobbyists, once while in a state of some déshabillé, meetings arranged, to put a cherry on top, so to speak, by a vendor of imqaret and pastizzi, albeit very good ones. That this at around the same time jetting off to the West Indies on such a quick visit that he almost met himself coming back doesn’t help Dalli’s cause, either.

Dalli was, and remains, free to attack the OLAF report and show it to be wrong, misleading or downright evil but the mere existence of the report, and its contents, rendered his position untenable and the choices given to him by Barroso were quite simply the obvious ones.

These choices, obvious as they are to anyone with even the slightest grasp of comme il faut, were that Dalli should resign to be able to clear his name or he must be fired, always assuming that he was unable to convince his boss that there was nothing to the OLAF report and it could be disregarded.

I am at something of a loss to understand why Dalli has chosen this course of action.

It has now come to light that among Dalli’s first thoughts seem to have been: a) call Joseph Muscat; b) check on his pension and other entitlements; and c) prepare the way to pick at nits and employ cavils, on the lines of “I never resigned in writing, so I never resigned” for all the world like a sad little barrack-room lawyer (or shop steward of the worst kind).

It has also become apparent that his recollection of events is significantly at odds with those of Barroso, whose testimony, when it comes to the credibility one can give it, has the advantage of being consistent and dispassionate. It would be naive to expect Dalli to be dispassionate, to be fair, but, perhaps, a more considered approach to what he was trying to achieve, and how he was seeking to do it, would have been better counselled.

From what I’ve seen of the matter, it would seem that while Dalli’s lawyers think they’re in the Industrial Tribunal trying a case of constructive dismissal, while everyone else is wondering why the devil Dalli is trying to wind back the clock and retract his freely-given, if mandated, resignation, it would clearly be more in his interests to attack the OLAF report. Rather than expecting Barroso to fight it for him, which is not Barroso’s job.

This sort of woolly thinking will, I suspect, come back to bite Dalli when the verdict is handed down, as it will the equally wooly-minded Green MEPs who have chosen to nail their collars to his mast. Barroso, it is becoming increasingly clear, at least to me, had no choice in the circumstances and the target for Dalli and his supporters’ attacks should in no way have been him but OLAF.

And while we’re about it, could Dalli’s advisers do him a big favour and stop him from making ludicrous allegations about who is in bed with whom? His primary delusion that Barroso and Lawrence Gonzi were colluding against him has already gone down in flames; the rest will probably follow suit soon enough.

imbocca@gmail.com

http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/author/20