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One year since he became PN leader, Lawrence Gonzi is facing widespread public discontent. Karl Schembri analyses the prime minister’s tumultuous year and the troubles yet to face him
The PN’s sombre electoral campaign before next week’s local elections is perhaps more suggestive than anything else of the current mood of the man at the helm of the ruling party.
A year ago, just three months before the first ever European Parliament elections to be held here, Lawrence Gonzi was ecstatically talking of the “changes to come” and the “new realities” facing the nation.
By now, the PN leader and prime minister must have realised that great changes have taken place here since his topmost ascent to the party leadership and ensuing entry to Castille, but he has hardly been in charge of them.
With Malta’s entry into the European Union, Gonzi found himself in a changing political landscape characterised by an impatient, if not unforgiving, electorate.
The criticism is relentless: traditionally PN-sympathising unions promise industrial unrest, the independent press is questioning government more than ever, and the public’s tolerance levels in the face the country’s structural problems inherited from Gonzi’s predecessor are near to zero.
Gone is the general goodwill disregarding the unacceptable side of government and the power of an emotionally charged and unifying, albeit polarised, vision of EU membership – with the issue settled once and for all, even the staunchest apologists are realising the extent of the trouble at the home front.
A picture of an accident-prone prime minister being overtaken by events has emerged in the past tumultuous year. Despite all the upbeat pretensions and seeming resilience, Gonzi’s political territory turned out to be full of landmines; from his own party core dissenting in public to middle class disenchantment, to the incident with his nephew forced to resign unceremoniously from his position as Hal Safi deputy mayor after xenophobic remarks. The image of Fenech Adami the visionary patriarch surrounded by an aura of next-to infallibility gave way to an atmosphere of irreverence and bitter realism.
With the spotlights shining on the dark side of the Fenech Adami legacy, the anointed successor has nonetheless exhibited his own DNA in the past months, showing he is no clone of the former prime minister-turned-president after all.
His hands-on approach and public involvement in the technicalities of the country’s management may be his strength but it has also been a source of some embarrassing gaffes, the sort of which Fenech Adami usually steered away from.
The elderly statesman would have never committed himself on the number of “missing doors” in a hospital under construction that is draining the country’s coffers; but Gonzi did at least set a date for its completion and made sure to take over the responsibilities of his incompetent ministers.
The decision to take finances in his hand has pitted Gonzi at the frontline of government as he attempts to put right a financial deficit, and an economy grossly mishandled in the name of development and economic liberalism.
Finances remain the toughest battle and much of Gonzi’s potential political mileage in the coming months will be linked to his success or failure in turning round the economy and somehow making the country more competitive. But government inefficiencies – the gas crisis is a case in point – and diminishing health and welfare services have already set a pessimistic outlook among large sections of the population.
Among his lesser acknowledged decisions which his predecessor strongly resisted, Gonzi closed down some useless embassies opened only a few months before he was sworn into office as he pursued a policy of rationalisation of public expenditure, but this was offset with the much more controversial approval of the Lm9 million spending spree on just one asbestos-filled building at the heart of Brussels to house Dar Malta.
That’s quite a luxury for a country claiming Objective 1 status with the European Commission right opposite the building, just to make sure Mr Barroso doesn’t miss it.
Gonzi has also been bold enough to scrap the infamous Mnajdra landfills decision and to start talking about the environment, although the overall waste management strategy remains, at best, shaky. The ensuing eco-tax measures were implemented in such a slipshod manner that not even environmentalists were convinced, as customers learned about the new taxes on plastic bags through their supermarket bills.
In contrast with Fenech Adami, Gonzi is much more accessible to the media, but also so inept at handling it. Part of his problem lies with the people surrounding him, and the total absence of the chief master of spin who used to pave the way for Fenech Adami so ruthlessly and effectively: Richard Cachia Caruana. Invisible spin has now been turned into a consistent, centralised policy of antagonism toward the independent press, with the main victim being information, and Gonzi himself.
The lack of political acumen of the people around Gonzi is exacerbated by their lack of style. Elderly party faithful complain of a distancing from the PN’s tradition, while the middle class constituency feels similarly alienated from its traditional party. Despite the varied liberal and conservative factions in the PN spectrum, the expectation of an elegant, smart and ‘Nationalist’ way of doing politics unites them.
In the meantime Gonzi has no qualms appearing on TV eating with Maltese singers competing to go and sing in the kitschiest song festival on earth. He did even worse when he hosted Karl Bonaci – the former Labourite and confectioner turned into the brassy Nationalist television entertainer – together with other television stars, inside the offices of Castille, turning the country’s most poignant edifice into a vulgar reality show studio.
On the other hand, this is the same prime minister who insists on having only editors for his monthly press briefings and whose functionaries make it a point to remind journalists to wear jacket and tie for every press conference.
Within the party, Gonzi took the step to boost women’s participation through positive discrimination, something Fenech Adami had always been against; and he also pushed laws to get mayors elected with the majority of votes, thereby bringing to an end internal party feuds for the mayorship of different localities.
But the withdrawal from the Zejtun and Marsa elections is perhaps the most recent, and damaging, rupture from the Fenech Adami leadership.
With several of his own party faithful rebelling in public Gonzi will have to react, and possibly pre-empt, the internal party squabbles and seek to regain the grassroots’ confidence. If the majority of the PN’s executive committee members start perceiving party functionaries as a liability, it will be yet another painful test of Gonzi’s political judgement.
And even with that test passed, it would still be a long way from having won over the disgruntled pale blue middle class that not so long ago was so fervently behind the PN as it steered Malta into Europe.
karl@newsworksltd.com
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