Hitting at Gonzi by blaming his PR

In the days when Eddie Fenech Adami used to run the country, most of the media hacks used to be quite happy to accept prima facie his assertions that the situation was under control, that public finances were in good shape and that most of his meetings with foreign dignitaries were positive, to say the least.

Now that Lawrence Gonzi is at the helm - an EFA clone if there ever was one - things seem to be working out differently.

Rather than hitting out at the PM's ineptitude and his knack for taking a stream of mishandled decisions, pro-government columnists have found a roundabout way of hitting at the Gonzi administration.

By blaming it on the poor PR machine that the government allegedly has.

This was evident in two separate articles that appeared last Sunday in the columns of another English language weekly.

Former Minister Michael Refalo went to the extent of commenting that he sometimes wonders whether the PN really wants to win the next election. After congratulating the government for the way it had handled the EU referendum campaign - with EFA at the helm - he then made the following serious accusation on the way the Nationalists were trying to 'sell' their message:

'Distancing oneself, even unwittingly, from the people, stuffing the media with uncoordinated messages, ducking issues and playing puppets is no way to win over minds and keep supporters well informed.'

He tried to draw solace from the fact that even the Prime Minister himself has recently made a call for an urgent reappraisal of the government's communications structures and strategy - whatever that is.

Dr Refalo expressed the view that the PM might have been as dismayed and possibly as worried as he himself was, at the abject bungling of the Brussels building issue.

Where Dr Refalo was wrong was when he claimed that week after week Labour and the media hammered and stoked the issue until it became the hottest political potato in years. What he forgot to mention was that various independent commentators who had voted Iva during the referendum campaign had put themselves at the forefront in criticising the government harshly for this ill-timed decision. Surely they were neither influenced by Labour party spin doctors nor by the Labour leaning media in doing so!

Although I always felt that the Nationalists' strongest element was its PR machine, Dr Refalo seemed to have a different opinion. So much so that he even claimed that the PN's voice rarely reaches beyond the confines of the party faithful.

Almost in tandem with Dr Refalo's wake up call outburst, we had Ms D. Caruana Galizia - in complete defiance of her potential conflict of interest in the whole saga - defending single handedly the government's decision to buy Dar Malta at such a time, at such a price and in such a location.

After accusing the Prime Minister's Office of having allowed silence to reign over it, in its handling of this affair, she even lamented that 'nobody has come forward to shatter all these empty vessels who are making as much noise as possible'.

She seems to be suggesting that gone are the days when Richard Cachia Caruana used to allegedly spin-doctor various sagas from within the confines of Castille.

Dismissing all those who have criticised the Brussels project as people who know nothing about property and even less about capital investment, she accused the Prime Minister of having been put on the defensive by their claims.

Disagreeing completely with his tactics and strategy, she came out hollering that 'if it were me, I would have put a fire-rocket under each and every one of them - a polite and rational fire-rocket, because he is the Prime Minister - but a fire-rocket just the same'.

Suddenly we humble souls that have dared criticise the Brussels saga have become the madmen who have taken over the asylum. Rather than merely blaming us for doing so she claimed hysterically that we should not be permitted to carry on running it.

Indeed we shall.

If the Prime Minister will not have the decency to refer the whole saga to the Auditor General, and if the latter in his fine wisdom will choose to refrain from taking the lead by starting an investigation on his own initiative, as he is fully empowered to do, we now have it in writing by my colleague, Charles Mangion, that come next September he will ask the Public Accounts Committee to probe the issue in depth.

Meanwhile I already have a series of parliamentary questions lined up on the same issue when Parliament reconvenes towards the end of September, to ferret out certain information which certain ministers have for some reason or other chosen to keep close to their chest. Possibly out of fear or concern of ruffling certain big shots' feathers !

So if my former colleague, Dr Refalo, thinks that the whole issue has fizzled out he must indeed be much mistaken.

Leo Brincat is the Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs and IT

e-mail : leo.brincat@gov.mt