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Karl Schembri
Air Malta Chairman and MISCO director Lawrence Zammit is no longer being called in for strategy group meetings at the Nationalist Party but is still involved in polling for the party, MaltaToday can reveal.
The confidential report on the PN’s 2004 electoral defeat leaked last week on l-orrizont states the party administration depended far too much on polling and lists Zammit as a member of the strategy group.
But during Friday night’s One News bulletin, Lawrence Zammit said it was not his call to comment on the PN’s strategy group.
“It’s up to whoever appoints the strategy group to divulge the names of those on it,” Zammit told the Super One reporter, who seemed oblivious to the fact that the Air Malta chairman had publicly declared for ages his close Nationalist affiliation.
The reporter did not know that Zammit has somehow fallen out of favour with Gonzi, although he still provides the prime minister with opinion polls about the party’s popularity on a regular basis.
The 2004 strategy group found itself criticised in the confidential election analysis report for lagging behind in devising its electoral campaign, finalising it only 10 weeks before voting day.
The report says that “fundamental decisions on strategy were taken by the Nationalist leader himself” shortly after his election.
That still seems to be the prevailing atmosphere on the strategy group, as Gonzi remains surrounded by mostly uncritical loyalists whose internal criticism he can bear. And executive committee members say even their committee has ended up as an uneventful grouping of yes men who rarely question anything and in which none of the important decisions are taken.
“The closest thing to something interesting is when someone asks a question,” one executive member said. “Otherwise it’s the pretty boring stuff that gets discussed there, or rather presented to us as a fait accompli.”
The PN’s confidential report about the disastrous 2004 European Parliament elections leaked on l-orizzont last week shed light on the changing faces in the party’s strategy group over the last couple of years.
A year ago today, this newspaper had reported that the only two remaining from the old guard of the group were Lawrence Gonzi and Joe Saliba, the secretary general. With Eddie Fenech Adami at the Presidential Palace, Richard Cachia Caruana in Brussels and John Dalli on the backbench, the group took the controversial decision to pull out of the Marsa and Zejtun elections – a move that put the secretary general in the line of fire from all quarters.
L-orizzont’s leak exposed the full campaign strategy group for the previous year’s European Parliament elections, which gave the PN its worst electoral results ever in its history, just a month after Malta joined the EU.
For that election, the strategy group included MISCO director and Air Malta Chairman Lawrence Zammit, AZAD director Michael Fenech, In-Nazzjon editor John Zammit and Net TV’s head Louiselle Vassallo. There were also Gonzi’s deputy, Tonio Borg; the party’s propaganda officer, Gordon Pisani; Net TV’s broadcast manager Anton Attard and Gonzi’s head of secretariat, Edgar Galea Curmi. Cachia Caruana and Dalli were already out of the group.
kschembri@mediatoday.com.mt
Links:
http://www.maltatoday.com.mt/2005/02/20/t2.html
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