The exchange of insults between the PN and the PL goes on unabated. The PN’s latest bone of contention is the way that the Muscat administration has practically dismantled the One newsroom and taken on all its journalists as ministerial communications co-ordinators.
We will now see if the State goodies will be showered only upon those who embraced Labour
“Government by One journalists,” go the horrified squeals from the Nationalist corner, quoting Labour’s ‘Malta tagħna lkoll’ slogan as proof positive of Joseph Muscat’s hypocrisy.
They conveniently forget that up to a few weeks ago, the persons occupying those and other posts, were either from the Net or the PN stable.
Gordon Pisani who occupied the role of head of communications when the PN was in government, had been the Nationalist Party’s information secretary for a considerable length of time. Amanda Ciappara was a Net TV anchor woman and journalist and was reincarnated in a communications role for a couple of ministries including the Ministry for Infrastructure, Transport and Communications.
Claudette Pace – a PN candidate and now apparently mulling her very own leadership bid – had a stint as communications co-ordinator at the ministry of health. Veteran journalist and long-time editor of In-Nazzjon Mario Schiavone took on the role of communications co-ordinator at the ministry of education under Dolores Cristina.
Those are just a few examples of people with clear Nationalist leanings being appointed to fill in government posts. I’m sure that if somebody had to look up the archives or old press releases issued from the various ministries, they’d find that all of them were sent by some dyed-in-the-wool Nationalist.
At the time of the appointments, I don’t recall the same amount of scandalised bleating about partisan appointments. There may have been some resentful murmurs from Labour when Pisani was parachuted from PN HQ to the Office of the Prime Minister, but his appointment was justified on the grounds that his was a highly-specialised post and one for a political appointee not a neutral civil servant. I tend to agree with this assessment.
The job of conveying government and ministerial policy to the public requires a mix of good communication skills and political astuteness. Moreover, a government spokesperson has to be trusted by the minister he or she works for.
Now the Nationalist posse may be qualified enough, but there is no way that a Labour minister will be comfortable entrusting appointing any of them as his spokesperson when they’ve all been involved in anti-Labour campaigns at one point or other. Do we really expect Muscat to retain Pisani’s services after he’s been involved in several Nationalist campaigns and has acted as Lawrence Gonzi’s right-hand man for a number of years?
Had the boot been on the other foot and Gonzi been re-elected Prime Minister, I wouldn’t have expected him to be calling Kurt Farrugia or anyone else from One to conduct his communications campaign, well-qualified as they may be.
So please, stop droning on about government by One journalists. If the appointment of a handful of journalists as communications personnel equates to government, we’ve had government by Net journalists for the last couple of decades.
While the role of communication co-ordinators must necessarily be given to people whom ministers trust, if every appointment to the boards of assorted quangos and state agencies are given to Labour-leaning individuals, it’s going to make a mockery of Muscat’s promise of meritocracy.
Not that it hasn’t started sounding rather hollow, even before Labour made it to power. Muscat’s declaration that Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando would retain his state-funded chairmanship of the Malta Council for Science and Technology has more or less put paid to that particular hope.
We will now see if the State goodies will be showered only upon those who embraced Labour, regardless of their ability of otherwise, to see if ‘meritocracy’ was just another pre-electoral mantra.
Here’s wishing a very happy Easter to readers and staff of this newspaper.
cl.bon@nextgen.net.mt