The Labour Party delegates made a deliberate and clear choice. They opted for the person who made it a point to appeal to them on the basis that the Labour Party needs to be hitting back.
Even if the new deputy leader for the Labour Party, Chris Cardona, failed to thank his immediate predecessor Konrad Mizzi, his election to the post is due to Mizzi on at least two counts.
It was thanks to Mizzi that the Labour Party bothered to amend its statute to make it possible for a member of Parliament, for a minister even, to contest this post. Present ministers who suddenly discovered they could do the job after all did not rate their own talents as highly when Mizzi was contesting.
It was then thanks to Mizzi and his involvement in the Panama Papers that he was asked to step down from the post – while the Prime Minister retained him as the most powerful minister within Cabinet. The amendment to the Labour Party statute that was tailor-made to suit Konrad’s crowning could not be suddenly un-amended (!) and the end result: Chris Cardona, the Hatchet Man, is Labour’s new deputy leader.
On being elected to this post, it was reported that he intends to build bridges. Since it is difficult to build bridges with a hatchet in hand, I thought I should try to find out best what the new deputy leader told Labour Party delegates by checking that party’s own news portal.
Here is the precise text on bridge building: “He said that there should be a strong bridge for Labourites and a strong bridge for persons who have suffered any injustice.”
In other words the bridge building that the new deputy leader has in mind is one that extends to their own.
It is at best an internal bridge with Labourites who are being spotted on their radar as disgruntled, and when that bridge or series of bridges is built, he might (according to other media reports) reach out to others, provided they accept that Labour is the key to be progressive or to move ahead.
Instead of burying the hatchet, the Labour Party has chosen to bury the concept of a national movement
It is like stating: ‘We shall first and foremost take care of our own, but we might also make some space for those who offer to convert to our way of thinking.’
As Nationalist Party leader Simon Busuttil pointed out recently, Cardona represents the direct opposite of good governance. While the Prime Minister vehemently defends and protects his chief of staff despite all that has emerged in his regard in the Panama Papers, Dr Cardona is officially in a business relationship with his own chief of staff.
In the United States, the term ‘hatchet man’ assumed particular significance in the context of the Watergate scandal.
The term was used with respect to persons who were taskedto protect the administration and to attack the Opposition through whatever means were deemed necessary.
Eventually the Watergate scandal had the better of the Nixon administration, and I am confident that in Malta the Panama scandal will have the better of the present government, no matter how many hatchet men are tasked with denigrating all opponents of government, including the independent media, critics, bloggers or even individual citizens.
At one point, Dr Cardona mentioned the need for the Labour Party to catch up with the Labour government.
He may wish to consult Ralph Morris Goldman, whose work The Future Catches Up: American Political Parties and Politics (Vol. II) refers to hatchet men as persons “who are employed by those who believe that the only way to deal with an Opposition is to exterminate it. Typical totalitarian doctrine”.
The truth is that the Nationalist Party emerges strongest whenever anyone attempts to trespass on its rights.
One message emerges clearly: instead of burying the hatchet, the Labour Party has chosen to bury the concept of a national movement that comprises one and all without distinction.
Now the Labour Party is officially all about hardcore, internal bridges, giving the priority to one’s own and trying to remain in government.
Francis Zammit Dimech is a Nationalist MP.