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GWU secretary general Tony Zarb claims the union has been democratic all along the way in unceremoniously getting rid of Josephine Attard Sultana at all costs
Listening to Tony Zarb, you would almost think Josephine Attard Sultana’s dismissal from the union was the perfect example of direct democracy at work.
 It’s what the delegates wanted, what the statute provides for, it’s democracy, he says. There’s no hint of a sense of leadership that could have changed the course of things, let alone the suggestion – now also an open allegation by Attard Sultana herself – of his underhand manoeuvrings with Gejtu Mercieca to sack her from the union.
I meet him the day after what seems like the unexpected summary execution of Attard Sultana and her section’s president on Tuesday evening, and he starts off with an improbable declaration: “I want to declare we have no war with Josephine Attard Sultana from our end”.
‘Our’ is clearly the central administration, the union’s arm led by Tony Zarb and his deputy Gejtu Mercieca that took over the quest to call an extraordinary conference to remove Attard Sultana after her section turned down a similar request which it deemed to be manipulated.
What did you get out of all this, I ask him after the storm, although the shockwaves have yet to start being felt.
“We gave a clear signal that everyone has to remain within the union structures, to work in the members’ interests and also to respect the decisions of delegates,” he says matter of factly. “The delegates,” he insists, were pushing for Attard Sultana’s dismissal on the grounds that “she worked against the union’s interests”.
Who exactly, Mr Zarb?
“I have no idea. I was just presented with the petition and I don’t know who pushed it.”
Did you encourage them to collect the signatures?
“No no no – I assure you I spoke to none of the delegates, I repeat I spoke to none of the delegates, to encourage them to sign that petition.”
And Gejtu Mercieca’s role?
“The same as mine. He had nothing to do with it.”
Nothing whatsoever to do with it – a statement confronted by Attard Sultana and most of public opinion as Zarb ultimately pushed forward the delegates’ request to sack her despite a court decision to call off an extraordinary general meeting.
The charge against Attard Sultana of working against the union’s interests is as vague and smells of omission as Zarb’s resignation for “personal reasons” three years ago. In what way did Attard Sultana work against the union’s interests?
“In the last months, if not years, we’ve tried as an administration to get Attard Sultana with several groups of workers from her section who were complaining about the service they were getting. The groups we’ve met told us they were not being given the service they required, they were made to wait long periods, be it to meet her, for her to answer letters, leaving pending issues for a long period of time. We’ve tried getting Josephine to meet these groups. They are diverse workers – from the health sector, the government utilities garage, water services, several of them. We’ve tried to bring Josephine closer to these workers, but what happened was the opposite, they went further apart from each other.
“Now more than a year ago, when she convened her section’s biennial meeting, there was a request for a secret vote, and a substantial number of delegates voted against her, they did not give her a vote of confidence, so the alarm bell had long been ringing, it didn’t just happen overnight.”
Turns out the “substantial” number of delegates against her were less than 20 against around 70 who voted for her, but the question of her going against the union’s interests is answered with an equally vague answer: “It’s lack of service,” he says.
Is that what you mean when you say she went against the union’s interests?
“It’s not just that, there’s more.”
Like what?
“The way things developed, they were taken outside the union’s structures when the union has all the structures that could have been used. We have our structures that can be used. Josephine didn’t use them.”
What are you referring to specifically?
“For example when we decided on the date of the extraordinary meeting, instead of discussing that and contesting it internally she just came out and went to court. I’m not saying she doesn’t have a right to go to court, but why didn’t she use the union’s structures?”
Zarb then lets the cat out of the bag when he expresses his deep sense of irritation at Attard Sultana’s washing the union’s dirty linen in public, in a public court of law.
“There was also a lot of damage done against the union in the newspapers after the case was taken to court,” he says.
Never mind that the union’s newspaper was attacking Attard Sultana and her lawyer George Abela on the front page. Never mind also that Attard Sultana was banned by Zarb himself from giving interviews to the press.
“It’s standard practice that requests for interviews are submitted for approval,” he says. So in a controversy pitting her against Zarb, it has to be Zarb who decides who has a voice. “Besides,” he adds, “in this case, much information was already being channelled to certain sections of the media. She wasn’t allowed because we saw that whatever had to come out came out on the media. I wasn’t happy with that. For example in one instance, we had a meeting with delegates last Monday. Radio 101 was reporting what was said during that meeting just 10 minutes after. The Nationalist media was well informed throughout. Someone was talking to them, it’s definitely not us.”
But to return to Zarb’s charge of taking the matter outside the union’s structures, how could she resort further to them when Zarb was interfering in her section? She had referred the matter to the ad hoc commission set up to scrutinise the petition after all.
“No we didn’t interfere at all. What we did was to abide by the national council’s decision that the central administration and the section administration meet and agree on a date for the extraordinary meeting, for nothing else. It was the extraordinary meeting as requested by delegates in their petition. Now I have to say that to this date, we as administration have not one single individual who has withdrawn his signature. That petition was sent to me as administration, as secretary general. I didn’t get one delegate telling me that he wanted his signature removed.”
The Commission is saying there were several who withdrew their signatures.
“It doesn’t result that way to me. Not only that, but I have letters from some of the signatories who are confirming, in writing, that they want their signatures on their original petition, even after the section’s commission got back to them to verify their signatures. The commission put pressure on the delegates; they threatened them that they could face court action. We didn’t set up the commission, and nobody asked us to verify the signatures.”
So do you consider the commission irrelevant?
“Yes. Nobody asked us to verify the signatures.”
Who should have verified the signatures then? Yourself?
“If we would have been asked to, why not? Why not? What we did was to defend the delegates’ decision according to the statute. The statute states clearly that if 40 per cent of the delegates sign a petition they have a right to call an extraordinary meeting.”
The section president, Francis Buttigieg, who called the union’s leadership ‘fascist,’ was also sacked by the union on Tuesday, even though there was no call for his resignation from the delegates.
According to Zarb, he “was sacked because he was supposed to bring the section together; he was supposed to rise above the current whenever he saw problems. He should have solved the issue. He failed seriously in his duties. It’s also shocking what was being said on the commission. There was big pressure on the delegates to remove their names from the petition.”
Zarb says the union will be suing Buttigieg in the deluge of libel cases filed in the wake of their dismissal.
“If we were a fascist leadership, we would go to the council and just dictate what we wanted to do. Instead we went to the council with a motion, everyone had the chance to take his or her stand and a secret vote was taken. How can you accuse us of being fascist when we’ve acted democratically throughout? That’s democracy. A secret vote was taken, now it’s up to everyone to abide by that vote. It would be undemocratic not to,” Zarb says.
Zarb must also be furious at George Abela, against whom the union and l-orizzont have been mounting a broadside of charges and allegations of having “an affinity with the PN”.
“First of all, in this regard we issued a press release to all media and not just the union’s papers,” Zarb says, as if that makes it better. “Besides, George Abela had nothing to do with this case. We attacked him on his comments. His comments were unwarranted and we reacted in that way.”
Again, Zarb dismisses any hint of heavy handedness, to say the least, in the way the union is treating its former lawyer.
“Heavy handed?” he says. “Why? We actually said the truth. I challenge anyone to tell us what’s untrue in what we said.”
In the open, Zarb says he sees no problem with the ports section resorting to George Abela to represent it in negotiations with the government, instead of using the union’s lawyers. Isn’t that a clear sign of mistrust in the union?
“Not at all.”
You don’t consider it a problem?
“Not at all.”
How do you deal with it?
“I deal with it in the way that they are negotiating, there is the union’s section secretary, and what’s important to us is that there is the union official in the negotiations.”
Since last October there was that famous leaflet saying ‘one way out’ to Josephine Attard Sultana, Karmenu Vella and Emmanuel Zammit. Is this what’s actually happening?
“I don’t tie this case at all with that leaflet. It was an anonymous leaflet which I had nothing to with. I have no idea who distributed it; I had nothing to do with it. The only leaflet I had sent was signed by me and everyone knew what I was sending to delegates.”
It looks like it’s payback time for them for nominating Emmanuel Micallef.
“There may be some who’ll try to portray it in that way. Josephine nominated me too, even Emmanuel Zammit. Karmenu Vella didn’t.”
The question out there is, who is next in line?
“No… I hope there’s nobody next in line. Everyone should work in the interests of the union and nobody should have problems.”
You’re saying Josephine wasn’t giving a good service. Do you have similar problems with other section secretaries?
“Not to this extent, no.”
Not to the extent that you’d sack them, right?
“No.”
About the internal division between militants and moderates, Zarb says it’s all an invented language – “that’s what others say”, although he did use that kind of language in the run-up to his re-election against Manwel Micallef.
“Yes,” he concedes, “we have no qualms being called militant; there’s nothing to be ashamed of. Our militancy is not destroying here or there, it’s about remaining determined till the end struggling in the interest of workers.”
Would you define Josephine as a militant?
“Well, the media does not put her in the category of militants.”
I’m asking you for your opinion.
“The media puts her with the moderates. If we had to rely on what the media says she’s a moderate.”
Come on what’s your opinion?
“In my opinion Josephine, given that she was a union official, she had to remain militant in defending the workers’ cause till the end. Every union official should do that; whoever doesn’t is failing in his duties.”
And yet, the militancy of a union saying enough is enough out on the streets has also fizzled away, bar a couple of protests during CHOGM week last year and empty threats that they would order industrial action against the surcharge.
“We met the Prime Minister twice or three times, it seemed we were going to find common ground, though not as much as we would have liked. We’re now just studying the pre-budget document to see if government is alleviating the surcharge, and we’ll take a stand accordingly.”
Why have you remained so quiet about it after meeting the prime minister?
“We didn’t remain quiet.”
You stopped protesting.
“Protests are not the only instrument we have, God forbid we just organise protests. We’ve asked for a meeting on the MCESD to meet the ministers who are responsible for the surcharge so that we would be able to show the sufferings of families and even employers because of the surcharge and to see how they are going to tackle this.”
Some believe you’ve failed to be militants with the government so now you’re being militants with your own officials.
“It’s totally untrue, it has nothing to do with it. What has it got to do with it? I repeat we have no problems with Josephine. Josephine had problems with her own section’s members.”
Aren’t you disappointed with the way things developed?
“I’m disappointed of course. I’ve been working with Josephine for years, even before we joined GWU. I’m not ecstatic, definitely I’m not having a ball. I’ve known her since we worked at Bluebell together.”
And when you spoke to her did it occur to you she wasn’t listening?
“Listen, whenever I spoke to her I always thought she got the message and things would improve, but she worked in the opposite direction.”
Aren’t you concerned that you’re taking an image of an executioner?
“I’m not executing anyone. I have only one vote on the council.”
The whole union is in your hands, you’re the Secretary General.
“No, whatever I did, I did it in continuous consultation with the central administration. What we did was in agreement between all of us, we went in front of the council, and the council discussed this matter and decided. I had only one vote. And I have a statute to abide with.”
Who will replace Josephine?
“That’s not for me to decide. We’ll have a conference electing a person to the post.”
How do you reckon people from outside the union are looking at this?
“From outside the union whoever has always been negative about the union will speak negatively about it, whoever believes the GWU is here to defend the workers will take it positively. The delegates will keep working for our members, in the interest of workers.”
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