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Matthew Vella
Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi has said he is considering a cabinet reshuffle as an option he leaves open to himself, saying he has ruled the option “neither in, neither out.”
Yesterday Gonzi was in Gozo for a meeting between administration officials of the Nationalist party, when he told MaltaToday that Labour leader Alfred Sant’s calls for a cabinet reshuffle were an option that is not entirely out of the agenda.
Contacted on his mobile phone, Gonzi said: “The Prime Minister always keeps it his prerogative to take a decision according to circumstances and in the national interest.
“There is no final position right now. I assess the performance of my ministers according to the political programme we follow.”
Alfred Sant may have smelt a possible cosmetic change in Gonzi’s cabinet, in a recent harangue having documented his party’s 23 reasons why the PM should change his ministers.
But it’s also a political game in which Sant is taking no risks in suggesting whom Gonzi should dump and whom he should anoint – it is just as well that Sant wants Lawrence Gonzi’s cabinet to stay exactly the way it is.
Gonzi brushes off the validity of Sant’s feigned egging for a change. “Alfred Sant’s suggestions are not exactly coming from a person I could really count on,” he says. “His 22 months presiding a cabinet showed the way he took decisions was wrong and he doesn’t inspire trust. A reshuffle is a matter the Prime Minister considers at the time he thinks ripe.”
But with rumours of a cabinet reshuffle on the cards, there is little evidence Gonzi will be indeed making the move. Even the leaders of The Times and The Malta Independent on Sunday, with unmistakable timing, plied the call for a reshuffle.
Speculation that Gonzi was calling former foreign minister John Dalli back into his inner circle faded into thin air when in an interview with MaltaToday Gonzi had said there were other ways of serving the country.
Concerned PN insiders have however suggested that Gonzi is in dire need of a facelift and that he may have to resort to some unsavoury decisions if he wishes to inject new energy into his government.
Last week, Sant held a press conference to list a bulletin of 23 reasons why Gonzi should change his team, detailing a history of general non-performance for Gonzi’s ministers.
And since 2004, the Prime Minister has indeed overseen a general worsening of the government’s finances, increased taxation, a decline in the manufacturing sector, and myriad resignations from the government’s companies falling under his bullish investments minister Austin Gatt.
Gonzi tells his faithful his ministers are working hard, and that their sweat will one day bear fruit. But Alfred Sant is content riding the wave of present disillusion. The last thing he wants is Gonzi getting rid of people like Louis Deguara, Ninu Zammit and Francis Zammit Dimech, top candidates for change, and replacing them with a fresh face that can inspire new confidence in his government.
Observers however doubt whether removing the party heavyweights who today have become dead weights, would indeed aid Gonzi’s waning support. The effects of removing his stalwarts from cabinet could ha
ve serious repercussions at constituency level.
Sant has left no clear idea of who he wants to see in the place of monoliths who have occupied the auberges for the last 15 years. “I have nothing to add to what I said in the last press conference,” he replied three times in his telegraphic fashion to questions by MaltaToday earlier this week.
Alfred Sant himself has outlined the politics of the game in his Times column, adding a whimsical touch to his calls for reshuffle. Those suspecting Byzantine manoeuvres, Sant said, “seemed to believe that if Labour was pressing for a reshuffle, it was because it was in Labour’s best interest for this not to happen. By urging the PM to do it, we were effectively blocking him from proceeding. On the other hand they seemed to also consider that were the PM to reshuffle his Cabinet, he would appear weak under Labour's prodding.”
Sant cleverly denied his call for “ministerial renewal” was not a partisan game, but one “widely proclaimed by citizens all over the island.”
He has mentioned no names who should be up for the chop. If not a reshuffle of sorts, he suggested, it could even be the replacement of the entire cabinet with the PN’s backbenchers, “but that’s the extreme example,” he had said.
And Gonzi is the man whom, like Sant says, “has too much on his plate, even because he has ministers who are not helping him.”
The most predictable change expected from Gonzi is a superficial change, which probably will include the upgrading of Tonio Fenech to ministerial status, who has mastered his finance portfolio since being thrust as junior minister under the Prime Minister.
Added to that is the possible appointment of junior ministers, which may probably include Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando, who this time around will probably not refuse another offer for cabinet membership, after turning down his first offer from Fenech Adami back in 2003.
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