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Karl Schembri
With a heavy electoral defeat and the upcoming executive committee election next month, the Nationalist Party has to decide how to react to the voters’ latest verdict and how to prepare for general elections in three years’ time.
A handful of party rebels have already made it clear that Secretary General Joe Saliba is to blame for the abysmal performance.
Former finance minister John Dalli was openly critical in what must have been one of the most virulent attacks on the party’s administration in ages.
“Party activists are being treated as people with no intelligence,” he told MaltaToday, accusing Saliba of strengthening his position within the party while ignoring the PN’s weakening position with the electorate. “This is the second election round that Saliba has been responsible for, and this is the second crushing defeat the Nationalist Party has suffered. The non-campaign that we had in these elections and the stupid campaign we had in June last year has shown the limits of the present party administration.”
PN stalwart Victor Ragonesi has also pointed his finger in Saliba’s direction. Asked by MaltaToday whether the PN’s Secretary General should assume responsibility for the party’s defeat in the recent elections he said: “Of course, definitely. He should explain why this happened and not invent excuses. After a serious and full examination of the reasons for this defeat we should all try to improve things. If there is someone there who is unable to improve things he should leave.” Pressed as to whether the PN’s general secretary should resign, Ragonesi said “Yes. If he is unable to find an alternative that is acceptable and approved by the whole executive.”
Dalli and Ragonesi are not alone: “It is clear to me that the party’s secretary general, Joe Saliba, must shoulder the responsibility for this result,” the former Marsa mayor and assistant personal secretary to Dalli, Frank Zammit, wrote on The Times last Tuesday. “If no one else is able to say it, then I will. Mr Saliba, it is time to go. Your time is up. You have led this party into consecutive electoral defeats and your ‘denial’ of this is turning members and long-term supporters away from the PN.”
Such public declarations from key party exponents are extremely rare from the Nationalist camp, although voters are consistently registering their disgruntlement and traditional middle class PN supporters are feeling increasingly distanced from the party.
But is Dalli’s position reflecting rising internal dissent in the PN? Evidently not, as the Secretary General did not even feel perturbed when asked by the media to comment on Dalli’s and Zammit’s damning remarks.
Saliba told The Malta Financial and Business Times on the day Zammit’s opinion piece was published that he had no comment to make about Zammit’s call for resignation. He told l-orizzont on the same day that he reads the newspapers a day after they are published, so he could not comment on calls for his resignations published on that day.
The previous week he told The Malta Independent that he could not reveal the much-lambasted “secret strategy” as PN Leader Lawrence Gonzi apparently forbade him from doing so.
“I have to obey my boss”, he said.
Perhaps his boss needs to wake up to the electorate’s messages and take charge of events as they unfold in front of him. Contrary to what he suggested in his press conference the day after local elections were held, he does not owe any explanations to the Opposition, but to the public.
The alarm bells are ringing.
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