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Karl Schembri
The outgoing Mayor of Santa Venera is “seriously considering” resigning for good from the local council in the wake of what he called “a destructive campaign” by other Nationalist candidates and lack of support from the party.
The 54-year-old mayor who has served at the helm of the council since the first elections in the locality in 1993 saw the majority unexpectedly shifting to Labour last week – a move which took both the PN and Opposition by surprise.
A veteran journalist with the PN’s daily newspaper In-Nazzjon, Caruana himself lost an insignificant number of votes in this latest episode of local political drama – just 16 less first-count votes when compared to the last election when he got 736. But his party lost a staggering 5 per cent in Santa Venera.
In an interview with MaltaToday, Caruana speaks of his initial refusal to contest the election until he was persuaded to submit his nomination by the party.
But with this disastrous result, he feels he has to speak out about the internal back-stabbing that was going on in the weeks leading to election day, as well as about the collective responsibility of the party for letting the electorate down.
“From the start of the campaign, two PN candidates started spreading lies about me,” Caruana says without naming them, although he indicates they are a man and a woman. “They carried out a destructive campaign. I never said one word against my colleagues or against my party. Whenever, during my house visits, I or the party was criticised, I explained as much as I could without pointing fingers at anyone. But these two candidates were spreading lies about me.”
Caruana is clearly disappointed with the result, but he says that for him this is anything but a personal defeat. He says he is disappointed for his party, but now his colleagues - who allegedly backstabbed him - got what they wanted.
“They achieved the result they wanted – I’m no longer mayor, but the party suffered because now the mayor is a Labour councillor,” he says. “I expect an apology from them. This is not the first time they did this. I also expect the party leadership to approach me.”
But clearly, the high absenteeism and the Labour swing can hardly be blamed on malicious rumour.
“I assume responsibility for this result, and I may even resign,” he says. “I’m taking my time to think about it. I’m weighing everything that’s being said, written and done to reach my own decision. I will just not be made a scapegoat however - that I won’t accept. Others also have to consider their responsibilities.”
Caruana says there should be no witch-hunt but the party has to do some soul searching publicly and transparently.
“Gonzi is just in his first year as prime minister, I know he is a sincere and honest man, let’s give him a chance. I also respect Saliba – the strategy is not just his personal decision. I don’t think he just decides strategy on his own. There’s a strategy group and he also has the support of other officials. So can we just point our fingers at Joe Saliba? I point the finger at myself first and foremost, at my colleagues on the council, at the Santa Venera sectional committee and at the MPs on this district. Where were they, the representatives of the Vendrizi in Parliament, when we really needed them? I just hope that this discussion doesn’t just happen within the party, behind closed doors, as happened with the discussion about the European Parliament election defeat last year. I know a commission was entrusted with an analysis report but nobody know its conclusions. The party should publish that report, and I hope they carry out a similar analysis now and make the results public, even about Santa Venera. Let’s discuss these issues now before it gets too late.”
Caruana says he was inundated with telephone calls from residents and friends who expressed solidarity with him after Labour votes ousted him as mayor.
But he complains he was treated unfairly on the party media when his council’s performance was being constantly denigrated without giving him the chance to speak.
“Presenting a programme on Radio 101 last Sunday Michael Falzon time and again mentioned Santa Venera. He kept saying what a disaster we suffered,” Caruana says. “Yes, it was a disaster, it’s a defeat, but I was the only mayor not to be contacted on that programme. A lot of people called me at home telling me to follow what was being said about Santa Venera. I was expecting them at least to call me to give my comments or to invite me to the studios as they did with other mayors. I called them to speak on air; they gave me another number which nobody answered.”
Falzon told MaltaToday that in no way was he attributing the disastrous result to Caruana.
“I didn’t even mention him,” Falzon said. “What I said was that this was a great disaster for the party, I don’t know why he took it personally. I was commenting about the extent of the disaster for the party.”
Caruana says that “if in Santa Venera we suffered a disaster, then Michael Falzon himself is partly responsible, in his capacity as Chairman of Water Services Corporation. People have complained for years of drainage problems which ‘his’ corporation always treated lightly, doing patchwork here and there without solving the problems.
There are people whose basements are overflowing with drainage, and most of them abstained from voting in protest. There are problems which WSC won’t treat; we would have to pay for all the works. Why? Because Santa Venera doesn’t fall within its programme of works.”
Asked about WSC’s “inefficiencies”, Falzon said he knew about drainage problems “inherited” from the drainage department although Caruana never called him about them. “It doesn’t mean I can just change everything overnight.”
Caruana also blames inefficiencies from central government and state corporations that are leading to Nationalists’ disgruntlement.
“Most of the time it’s individual bureaucrats ignoring us completely, or sabotaging the government. But even the PN sectional committee, and the party itself, hardly gave us any support. Our letters to Enemalta asking them to install new bulbs were ‘lost’ and one fine day found in a drawer. I even reported this case to the Ministry for Local Government but the people investigated just denied everything and the case stopped there. Enemalta is hopeless, there’s no management whatsoever there.”
Will he contest again?
“Definitely not. If it were up to me I wouldn’t have contested this election. This was the last one.
“When party functionaries called me to contest, I told them I didn’t wish to. They asked me more than once to reconsider. They told me they were taking my refusal as a joke, that they didn’t believe me. I repeated that if the party could do without me I wouldn’t contest, but they were very insistent.”
“It seems that up until the last days of the campaign the party never worried about Santa Venera,” Caruana says, although the party’s insistence on his nomination may shed some light on the needs to get Nationalists to cast their ballots.
“The party had very clear indications that it would increase its votes by three per cent,” Caruana says. “In fact in our last meeting for candidates Joe Saliba said that if there was a mayor who could lay his mind at rest and stop doing house visits, that was me. I didn’t do that, in fact I kept doing house visits until the last day of the campaign, despite the fact my daughter is in hospital and I’m constantly on call.”
After giving in to the party’s requests, Caruana says he had an “extremely positive campaign” with the local electorate.
“From my visits I deduced that the number of people who were not going to cast their ballot, either because of unsolved local council issues or in protest against central government, were going to be just a few individuals,” he says, “and I persuaded quite a few of them to get out to vote.”
On the Saturday of the election, Caruana says party officials gave him a pile of sheets with names and telephone numbers of individuals “believed to have problems”.
“At around 1pm I received a phone call to increase my efforts to get as many people as possible to vote,” Caruana recalls. “At around 2.15pm I was given a list from party headquarters. I was called by Angelito (Sciberras, the PN Assistant Secretary General).”
Among the 67 lost sheep pinpointed by the party, Caruana says 34 refused to speak to him.
“They refused to discuss why they were going to abstain,” he says. “Others refused to open their doors. My appeal to these people is to speak out, to tell us what’s annoying them. I understand they may have given up hope, but how can we know what’s the source of their disgruntlement? They have every right not to vote, but the party has to listen to them.”
Other Nationalists on the list complained of shabby roads and rats infesting their streets, drainage seeping inside their houses and unlit roads, according to Caruana. Whatever the reasons for their abstentions, the results were immediately clear from the first sample of ballots at the counting halls.
“From the first sample we realised we were in for a disaster; it was clear. The Labour candidates started celebrating immediately, all the other PN candidates left and I remained on my own, in the middle of the Labour crowd. I couldn’t believe they won the majority. My only disappointment is not personal at all; my disappointment is that the party lost the majority, and that some are now pointing their fingers at me. That I won’t accept.”
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