Reinventing Anglu: from devil to angel?

Until he was replaced by the moderate and business-friendly Louis Grech, Anglu Farrugia was pivotal to the PN's strategy to contrast its new young deputy leader to what was perceived as Labour's weakest link, a former member of the police corps in the 1980s with a poor delivery on TV.

For the whole PN strategy seemed bent on evoking a contrast between the PN's new young and dynamic deputy leader and Labour's prospective Deputy Prime Minister Anglu Farrugia: culminating in Farrugia's flop performance on Xarabank.

It was nearly mission accomplished. Farrugia's invitation to Busuttil to look at him in the eyes in typical police fashion and his mumbled arguments and attempt to impress with graphs raised the alarm bells of middle-of-the-road voters, just before the Christmas festivities, just in time for perceptions to sink in during the Christmas festivities.

As anthropologist Mark Anthony Falzon aptly put it last month: "Farrugia had come to resemble a scarecrow planted bang in the middle of Muscat's field".

For a while it seemed that Muscat had been caught wrong-footed by the PN's strategic move to turn the election in to a contest between deputy leaders. 

But unlike Sant, who was easily cornered due to his refusal to play according to the whims of the PN's strategic games, Muscat reacted by accepting to play along: ruthlessly deposing his own deputy leader and proposing the most affable candidate instead.

So in one fell swoop, Muscat substituted a middle class turn-off like Anglu Farrugia with a magnet for middle-of-the-road voters: nothing short of changing a liability with an asset.  

In fact Louis Grech incarnates Muscat's ideal of turning his party into a safe haven for disgruntled Nationalist voters.

Moreover the PN lost the powerful argument that a Muscat victory would have meant elevating Farrugia to deputy prime minister. Now they have to content themselves with the argument that by electing Muscat voters would make Grech deputy prime minister. Put simply it was the PN which had been caught wrong-footed by Muscat's ruthless but shrewd decision.

The cost of surgery

The official reason given for Anglu Farrugia's forced resignation was Muscat's disagreement with the deputy leader's criticism of a sentence handed down by magistrate Audrey Demicoli, whom he accused of political bias in a speech during an activity where Muscat was present. 

But the resignation came in the wake of Farrugia's flop in a debate with new PN deputy leader Simon Busuttil. This fuels the perception that following the debate, Muscat came to see Farrugia as a serious liability hampering his chances to win an election, which for many was already a foregone conclusion.

While the speech criticising the magistrate gave Muscat a pretext to ask for Farrugia's resignation, the timing seems to suggest that the fall-out was down to a TV performance gone awry. 

For this reason Farrugia may well go down in history as the first politician in Malta to resign for not delivering well on TV. While Muscat may sell this episode as one ushering a new culture of resignation, the timing suggests that Farrugia's major crime was spoiling the image of the party and undermining its electoral chances.

This raised the question; is Muscat ready to do anything to win power even ditching a loyal ally who had been democratically elected by the same delegates, which had elected Muscat in 2008?

This strengthens the perception that Muscat can be cold, calculating and ruthless: qualities which may not endear him to the electorate. 

In contrast to Muscat, Farrugia comes across as an unreconstructed representative of old Labour, a what-you-see-is-what-you-get politician.

The second problem was that by removing Farrugia so late in the day, Labour had exposed itself to the wrath of an aggrieved party insider who had access to sensitive information.

Farrugia's revelations on the party's hobnobbing with big business is damning because it comes from someone who can't be simply written off as a Nationalist stooge. In this sense Farrugia has hit at Muscat's Achilles heel; exposing Muscat's party authenticity deficit.

It was bound to happen that someone from Labour would eventually challenge Muscat's drift to the right, even if this begs the question; why did Farrugia only speak now?

In a Sunday Times interview Farrugia said he feared the PL was changing its core values, from a party which mainly represents the working class to one which felt too comfortable with big businessmen: adding he knows contractors who were close to individuals involved in Labour's finances.

Farrugia's direct reference to building contractors confirms claims from the rival camp that Muscat has made promises to contractors in return for their support.

It also comes in the wake of Labour's proposals to cut bureaucracy at MEPA and to split the authority in a way which seems to suggest that planning decisions would be less dictated by environmental considerations.

Moreover, after years of exploiting internal divisions in the PN and colluding with rebel backbenchers in parliament, Labour is getting a taste of its own medicine at a very late stage of the campaign when internal dissent could become even more lethal.

Still had Muscat retained Farrugia he would have been constantly thorn between the embarrassment of hiding him and the embarrassment of showing him.

At the end of the day Muscat seems to have asked himself: what was most risky? Keeping Farrugia on board not to suffer any internal bleeding; or removing him prevent a haemorrhage which could be even more costly during the electoral campaign?

Where Muscat seems to have erred was his calculation that Farrugia would not act as a spoiler on the eve of a historic election which sees Labour poised to win.

For weeks Muscat gave the impression that Farrugia was still in contact with the party and although hurt he was still part of Labour's family. But hat seems to have tipped the balance was a declaration by former candidate and ONE TV chairman Alfred Mifsud who compared Muscat's decision to remove Farrugia with that of a coach choosing his best players. This is a reminder of how individual actions can have a bearing on the bigger picture.

Muscat's discomfort with the new situation he found himself in was evident in his "no comment" to journalists asking him for a reaction to Farrugia's declarations. Muscat's declaration that he considered the issue "closed" evokes a comparison with Lawrence Gonzi's dismissal of Franco Debono as "irrelevant."

Pot calling the kettle black

Gonzi could not resist the temptation using the Farrugia interview as ammunition in a meeting held in the former PL's deputy leader Mosta constituency.

The same PM who dismissed Franco Debono's dissent as irrelevant went on to salute Farrugia.

"I salute Anglu Farrugia for having the courage to speak out. I have never agreed on policy with Farrugia but I have nothing but admiration for politicians who have the courage to stand up to injustice," Gonzi told the sizeable crowd of PN supporters in Mosta.

On Labour's links to the powerful construction industry, in a moment of temporary amnesia with regard to the PN's own ties with construction magnates, Gonzi posed a series of questions which he was expecting Muscat to answer.

"What is the link between Farrugia's revelations and Labour's proposed MEPA reform which will sideline the environmentalist lobby? What is the link to Labour's plan to construct a new power plant and two gas tanks as big as the Mosta Dome? Who are the construction magnates who came forward with these plans? Are they the same construction magnates who visited Dubai with Muscat?"

Although Gonzi's questions to Labour are legitimate they seem to fly in the face of decisions he took in the past - like the extension of building boundaries and the revision of local plans in 2006, which opened the floodgates for building development.

It also contrasts with his weakness to clamp down on illegal development and controversial permits, which have changed the Maltese townscape.

Surely with such a track record, expecting Labour to be virginal comes across as a bit rich.

On the other hand Labour seems to underscore the sensitivity of the middle class, whose consent it is seeking so desperately, to environmental degradation and the impunity of building contractors. For while the Maltese middle class may be generally liberal in its view on the economy, it also tends to have a very negative perception of building contractors.

Labour may well say that it is talking to businesses even big ones who feel "betrayed" by the PN. But one also has to ask why do they feel betrayed? Is it because they have not been granted building permits in the same liberal way as these were granted by successive Nationalist government prior to 2008?  For it was this perception which dented the PN's popularity before 2008 and forced Gonzi to heed this message on the eve of that general election.

If the perception that Labour is in cahoots with building contractors seeps in, Muscat risks being burnt: perhaps not enough to lose the election but enough to raise the alarms of voters who would be on the alert for any sign of debt repayment after the general election.

While any party with aspirations to be in government has to have its feelers in the business community, discerning voters tend to be suspicious of too much familiarity between big businessmen and politicians - especially when these seem to have a bearing on policy and even worse when such alliances are made even before a party is elected in government.

Moreover the latest declarations by Farrugia seems to confirm the perception that Labour has morphed itself in to a more socially liberal version of the Nationalist Party, not just by ditching old Labour's antics but also by appropriating the most questionable legacies of the rival party.