A party in flux

All the signs are there: Robert Abela is trying to forge a new leadership team that is to his liking rather than people pushed by others. The administration reflects a party in flux. When will this new team settle down?

A new person is to be appointed Labour Party Deputy Leader for Party Affairs after Daniel Micallef quit the post. The party statute has once again been changed to make it possible for a Labour MP or MEP to occupy this post. Alex Agius Saliba is being touted for this post, but has he been hit by some flash on the way to Damascus?

His electoral campaign was openly supported by Joseph Muscat and now Robert Abela opens the door for him to get this post. How come? Maybe, with Alex busy in Brussels, the real running of party affairs will be done by others in Malta and Alex will be just a figure head. Is there something Macchiavellian in Alex being encouraged to take the post? Time will tell.

Randolph De Battista, the party’s CEO, is to resign from parliament to become Malta's ambassador in Geneva. As CEO he has already been replaced by Leonid McKay. De Battista was co-opted to parliament in March 2022 in spite of not contesting the election of that same year. His replacement in parliament, who will also be co-opted, has not been announced yet. So there is a vacancy for a pro-Abela Labour MP!

The Labour Party president, Ramona Attard, has announced that she will not be seeking re-election to her post. Will this lead to the creation of another vacancy for a pro-Abela Labour politician? Who knows!

The PM’s Chief of Staff, Glenn Micallef has been nominated for the post of EU Commissioner and his position has been ‘awarded’ to Mark Mallia, who has never fitted in any of the posts which he was appointed to - often for short spells - under the different Labour administrations. What will happen if Glenn Micallef does not make it to EU Commissioner? Will he be left out on a limb, or given some other job?

Ivan Falzon has left his post of CEO at Infrastructure Malta to be replaced by Steve Ellul who failed to make it to Brussels in the MEP election and hardly made any mark as chief of Project Green. He promised a lot but delivered little. Of course, Infrastructure Malta will not be as starved for funds as Project Green was.

Ivan Falzon, apparently is seeking pastures new, away from Abela’s administration.

The changes in the communications set-up in Castille are very interesting. Aleander Balzan and Claire Azzopardi are out, to be replaced by Samuel Lucas. The head of Labour's communications office, Ronald Vassallo, has also left his post. Will more people be drafted in the OPM’s and the PL's communications section?

Considering the time people given new posts take to settle down in their job and the date when the current administration must face voters in a general election, Abela will be sailing in troubled waters if any of these newly appointed people are not up to scratch.

But were they chosen for their ability or more for their political allegiance to the Prime Minister? Experience has shown that the latter is probably the case.

The practice of juggling people from one job to another - including parliamentary seats given to people who have never contested an election - irritates the man in the street.

Many want to know why someone who is given a particular post is suddenly replaced by yet another ‘bażużlu’. Was the first person nominated for the job not up to scratch, or is this juggling game the Prime Minister’s attempt to satisfy every ‘bażużlu’.

Considering the time lag until the next general election, Abela cannot afford to have people who do not deliver when in charge of running particular areas of the administration. He cannot keep relying on favours and distribution of cheques to win the next election.

Whether the flux in the heads of responsible areas of the administration stops at this point - so that Abela’s administration can work serenely from now on - is a very important aspect that affects the way many uncommitted people decide to vote.

It seems that the PN must have understood this by now after so many electoral disasters. So Abela’s efforts should - in theory - also take care of this aspect.

And now there are three

David Fabri and Godfrey Baldacchino wrote an interesting piece on the proposed amendments to the Cooperative Societies Act that was published in the Times of Malta last Tuesday. The amendments are currently open for consultation.

A note at the end of their contribution states that the two contributors served as members of the Board of Cooperatives between 1994 and 2003 and were involved in the drafting of the current law.

The two authors feel that the proposed amendments should have been better explained, in the sense that the government did not bother to justify why these amendments are needed.

They are particularly miffed with the proposed change in the minimum number of members needed to form a coop.

While currently this number is five, the proposed amendments reduce it to three. This means that a coop can be made by two parents and a sibling or by one parent and two siblings.

In their opinion, ‘the measure is also likely to spawn a number of ‘fake’ coops, composed exclusively of family members, who apply for coop registration with the understanding that they would be exempt from company tax.’

While any earnings passed on to individual members are taxed, as is normal for everybody, the coop itself does not pay income tax but pays 5% to the Central Cooperative Fund (CCF).

The two authors argue that if the intention is to increase the number of viable coop societies, the solution is ‘an education and informational campaign, not a dilution of the principle of cooperation’.

The problem is that government has published the proposed law for consultation but did not bother to say why these amendments are needed - more so regarding the issue of reducing the number of persons that can form a coop.