Conditions with no solution

“A solution (to the situation regarding the government’s majority in Parliament) should be one with no conditions attached to it. I will accept no conditions.” This is what the Prime Minister said just over six months ago, on January 22, at a party gathering in Żebbuġ. But we are no longer surprised when Lawrence Gonzi does not keep his word.

Who, effectively, is Prime Minister?- Helena Dalli

It now transpires that the Prime Minister is facing the opposite reality: conditions with no solution.

Conditions dictated by the independent member of Parliament whom the Prime Minister is to consult and whose approval he must seek every time a Bill is to be presented in Parliament.

Needless to say, this is not a good position for a Prime Minister to be in. When Premier Alfred Sant found himself in a similar situation, he went to the country. Dr Gonzi prefers to hold on to power albeit at the mercy of one MP (and, possibly, others) who can prescribe what is carried and what is not carried in Parliament, among other things. I can imagine Dr Gonzi sending text messages to a few of his MPs asking their permission to express his opinion.

This, to me, is a metaphorically castrated Prime Minister. According to our Constitution, “there shall be a Cabinet for Malta which shall consist of the Prime Minister and such number of other ministers as may be appointed... The Cabinet shall have the general direction and control of the Government of Malta...”

How strong is a Prime Minister, then, when deciding at Cabinet level he has to act on what an independent parliamentarian is telling him? When the final say on the parliamentary agenda and on what laws are carried in Parliament depend on a person not only out of Cabinet but also out of the PN parliamentary group? Who, effectively, is Prime Minister?

But because I said so using the apt metaphor, all hell broke loose. The Nationalist Party media machine went to town: How dare she?

One of the online commentators concurring with my statement, concisely and precisely said what I would have said were I to bother to reply to the PN spin: “In every language, anatomical metaphors are used to refer to social, political and other phenomena, example, heartless, toothless … why not b…?”

When Cuban military pilots shot down civilian aircraft flown by the Cuban-American exile group over international waters, Madeline Albright (then US Ambassador to the UN) had famously stated: “This is not cojones. This is cowardice.” President Bill Clinton had then commented that this was “probably the most effective one-liner in the whole Administration’s foreign policy”.

In another case, The Economist had described President George W. Bush as having “no cojones”.

According to Pablo Pardo, El Mundo’s correspondent in Washington “‘Cojones’ also seems to be making an impact on US political thought at more elevated levels. Colum Lynch, The Washington Post’s correspondent for the UN, posed the question this week in his regular post for the online edition of Foreign Policy magazine: ‘Has Susan Rice (current US Ambassador to the UN) found her cojones moment?’”

That we have an emasculated Prime Minister is a political reality. Nobody can deny that Dr Gonzi has been weakened. I was thus commenting on a fact.

Unlike when Dr Gonzi had, in one fell swoop during a parliamentary sitting, dismissed all Labour MPs as “empty vessels”. Worthless, not just without cojones. I don’t recall any outcry then by the PN apologists who today act all scandalised by what I said.

Trying to score some political points, GonziPN said that I should hang my head down in shame. I think not.

I reiterate that we have a politically castrated Prime Minister, emasculated, weak…. describe him as you may. A Prime Minister conditioned by the actions of an independent MP and others still in his parliamentary group, is just that. This, when only a few months ago Dr Gonzi had asserted that he will accept no conditions from anyone. Indeed, at the moment he said it, he looked so serious and determined that I was convinced that the Prime Minister wasn’t even going to accept conditions from himself.

A fast-drowning government clutches at every straw that floats around in the murky waters that it has itself created and turns to its media cronies who might serve to palliate and offer some cover. As GonziPN continues to stutter, the old formula of demonising its critics is now turning out to be one of its main undoings.

Dr Dalli is shadow minister for the public service and gender equality.