Is Lawrence Gonzi suffering a loss in his sense of decency, his commitment to the workings of democracy? He has already shown he finds a sense of humility hard to practise.
Lawrence Gonzi speaks in absolutes. According to him, he is always absolutely right. He only sees what he wants to see- Lino Spiteri
He speaks in absolutes. According to him, he is always absolutely right. He leaves no room for self-analysis – he is right in all regards.
He only sees what he wants to see. A number of sycophants do him the disservice of not even whispering in his ear the reminder that pride comes before the fall.
The only time the Prime Minister admitted he might have erred was in respect of the nifty remuneration rise he granted himself and his ministerial colleagues and the parliamentary secretaries. The error he referred to was not in the substance of his actions. To him, to look in the mirror and say henceforth you shall receive from taxpayers’ money an extra €500 a week without informing those same taxpayers up front was not an error at all.
Nor was it an error to flaunt parliamentary practice and not make it clear in the budgetary estimates presented for scrutiny and debate by the House of Representatives that ministers and parliamentary secretaries would be paid more.
Though many people, including from within his own ranks, expressed surprise at his temerity, the only thing the Prime Minister felt he had done wrong was in not wrapping the remuneration hike in an appropriate PR exercise.
That hardly qualifies as an act of humility. It is more a self-serving reflection, a PR lesson learned.
And learned it was. For nowadays spin has become the flavour of all that the Prime Minister and the government do, whether to talk about their record or to attack the opposition.
The latest example of that was the way in which Gonzi and his team reacted to the Moody’s downgrade of Malta’s sovereign bonds, and the rating agency’s negative outlook of Malta. Faced by a similar situation last week, Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi tried to bluster away Standard and Poor’s downgrade of his country and, effectively, of him.
In different circumstances bluster was also used by Gonzi and his finance minister. Contrary to the spirit of a reasoned contribution to The Times by two PN officials, they chose not only to bury their heads in the sand, but also try to blind Maltese society with spin.
That the effort did not work is neither here nor there. It demonstrates the honed Gonzi style. A cynic might say, that’s politics. All governments, and oppositions too, are guilty of spin, to an extent or another. Yes. But, beyond occupational sins, all governments should retain respect for the broad workings of democracy and common decency.
It should be common decency not to personalise politics. And one should be democratic enough to acknowledge democratic choice, even where one disagrees with the outcome. Not so Lawrence Gonzi in respect of Labour’s Karmenu Vella and Alex Sceberras Trigona.
Like all politicians, they have a past. Like me they were in the 1981-87 Labour Cabinet which had its fair share of issues to account for.
Unlike me, since I retired from politics in 1998, they feel they have a political present and future. Sceberras Trigona, after some time out of mainstream politics, contested a post in the Labour Party hierarchy. The party delegates chose him over another contestant. It was a democratic outcome which had nothing to do with the leader ofthe party.
Vella has been an MP for decades. He served as a minister in the 1981-87 Cabinet, and I am not aware that anybody questioned his performance of ministerial duties. He was a minister once more in the 1996-98 Labour government, in charge of tourism. Leading members of the sector say to this day he was the best tourism minister ever, with due respect to other Labour and also Nationalist stalwarts who also fulfilled that role.
He stood for re-election in 1998, 2003 and 2008. Each time the electorate taking part in that basic democratic process returned him as handsomely as could be. There is little doubt that it will do so again when the next election takes place.
That democratic background notwithstanding, Gonzi took it upon himself to personalise politics. He sanctimoniously declared that opposition leader Joseph Muscat should turn away Sceberras Trigona and Vella because they had served in the 1981-87 Cabinet. The PN general secretary rapidly becamehis master’s voice, parroting thepersonal attack.
It looks as if we are going to have a particularly dirty general election. The PN platform is already clear. There will be a reiteration of the GonziPN brand, now that the Prime Minister has quelled his backbench unrest, not least by throwing taxpayers’ money at his MPs. There will be stress on the state of the economy and public finances, which are not bad but are hardly as good as the government says. There will be attempts to rake up the Labour record in office. And there will be more personal attacks, especially by the unleashed PN dogs of war.
It will be interesting to see how Labour responds. To my mind it should: place the facts of the past in their true perspective, warts and all; not resort to personal counter-attacks; refrain from giving hostages to fortune by promising what could be undeliverables, particularly in the context of the situation it might inherit should it win the general election. And it should look to the future in reality terms.
Meanwhile, there is an open field. For all Gonzi’s self-assurance, there remain pointers of discontent. A couple came up to me in a restaurant on Wednesday. We are Nationalists, they said, but the PN has been there too long. We’ll vote Labour.
A well-educated and idealistic young man whom I had never met visited me. He had always voted PN, he said, but now wanted to help give shape to Joseph Muscat’s idea of a progressive movement. Both approaches were unsolicited and in each case I stressed I am out of politics. But they are straws in the wind.
Spin and bluster have not removed them. Stooping to personal attacks is unlikely to do so, either.