Jason Micallef must be grinning like a Cheshire cat. For years he was lampooned mercilessly as the general secretary who just could not get anything right. Factions and cliques within the Labour Party? Micallef was behind them all, the Nationalist media would tell us. He was two-faced, In-Nazzjon wrote, and applied different weights and measures to Labour candidates.
Never mind that Nazzjon subsequently recanted on this point, Micallef was thereafter cast as the villain in the Labour panto. If Alfred Sant was public enemy number one, Micallef was up there in the top 10 most reviled Labour officials.
He was once caught on camera allegedly mouthing something mildly derogatory about Lou Bondi, who asked viewers to lipread the epithet Micallef was supposed to have made about him. No professional lip readers could confirm the slight. The amateurs among us couldn’t make out the correlation between Micallef’s lip movements and the naughty word Bondi insisted he had uttered.
Truth be told, Micallef did shoot himself in the foot on more than one occasion. There was his inexcusable ignorance about the number of new voters in the 2008 election, his perennial Pepsodent smile and ill-advised outbursts about cosmetically-enhanced PN spin doctors.
The Labour Party’s 2008 billboard campaign was less than inspirational. Though Labour switched from rowdy red to classier magenta, it wasn’t enough to make voters switch their allegiance. As for the ‘Korruzzjoni’ billboard, it provoked multiple libel suits against the Labour Party which far outweighed any shock value its creators were trying to make.
Moreover, the Labour campaign was disjointed and characterised by leaks and a lack of team spirit. Since this all happened on Micallef’s watch, he has been linked to the 2008 PL defeat, which may explain why he was hustled out of the post as soon as decently possible.
The Nationalists crowed over these goings-on and cited the records of Micallef’s PN counterparts as epitomes of successful general secretaries. Their smugness was short-lived, because barely had Joe Saliba trotted off into the sunset to solve the problems of quantum physics, than they were landed with their very own Micallef. You don’t have to be a PL supporter to note that Paul Borg Olivier’s stint as PN general secretary hasn’t been a success.
A few months after his election came the first Borg Olivier gaffe. He sent an e-mail to government and Nationalist Party officials enjoining them to exchange information about customer complaints. The public debate about the propriety of such a request was possible only because Borg Olivier sent the e-mail to Micallef by mistake.
Subsequently there was a lot of fudging from the PN side about how this was only an exercise in improving the customer care provided by government. But no PN exponent could come up with a clear explanation as to why party officials should be involved in a process which ought to be provided by the government. There was talk about the blurring of the line between the government and the party. Borg Olivier had blotted his copybook.
That storm blew over, but Borg Olivier made the news when he was spotted enjoying a yachting holiday with contractor Zaren Vassallo. Now holidaying with contractors is not illegal but it does lead to questions being asked.
I know, I know. We have to continue believing that the enjoyment of freebies by a party official will have absolutely no bearing on how the donor of those freebies is treated by the party official’s government. Believing these little pieces of fiction makes life more bearable, even though it’s not as harmless or enjoyable as believing in the Tooth Fairy.
Again, Borg Olivier’s actions in this case were not the most astute, especially in the light of the hullaballo when Saliba had done the yachting jig with the same contractor.
Still, these gaffes may have faded in the public memory had the PN general secretary not mishandled the Nikki Dimech case. The Sliema mayor elected on the PN ticket admitted to police that he had asked for commission.
This ‘admission’ was made in the latter of two interrogation sessions, held several hours apart, during which Dimech claims he was deprived of his asthma medication. Strangely enough, the normally reticent police thought it fit to reveal parts of the statement to the press, in time for the next day’s edition of the newspapers.
This haste to ‘inform’ the public was not matched with other action, and at the time of writing Dimech has not been charged. Despite this, Borg Olivier wrote to Dimech dismissing him from the party and subsequently pressured Dimech’s fellow councillor Sandra Camilleri, to sign a motion against him.
The result of these strong arm tactics? Both Dimech and Camilleri have resigned from the PN while retaining their positions on the council. In yet another interesting twist, Dimech has said he had been directed by Borg Olivier about whom to award a €1.2 million waste recovery tender, an allegation immediately denied by the PN general secretary.
This implosion in the PN stronghold of Sliema means the party officials are not happy bunnies. They must be hoping Saliba is done with unlocking the secrets of the universe, and can stage a comeback.
And although the saga is a fairly riveting summer soap opera, the interests of the community are not being served, as the council has practically been brought to a standstill and an atmosphere of deep division been created.
But before we point fingers at bumbling general secretaries and irregular dealings by politicians, we would do well to see why they were voted into office in the first place.
Blind loyalty to a party or to a candidate, voting in expectation of the receipt of favours or patronage and ignoring the dire necessity for laws about party financing, means that we get the kind of party set-up (and party officials) we deserve.
cl.bon@nextgen.net.mt