More than unusual tension

Now that John Dalli has been successfully promoted up and out of the way in Brussels, you'd imagine that Lawrence Gonzi can finally sit back, relax and heave a sigh of relief. What about the disgruntled backbenchers who regarded Mr Dalli as their sympathetic father-confessor? Well, you'd imagine that after Dr and Mrs Gonzi's fatherly and motherly home visit to Franco Debono - no doubt, an innocent family reunion held in the glowing spirit of Christmas against the ideal crib-like background of rustic Għaxaq - the PN leader can at long last say: All is well on the backbenchers' front too.

I disagree with Maltastar.com's suggestion that the Prime Minister's visit to Dr Debono was really a "secret meeting". I rather agree with Mark-Anthony Falzon's view that it was a cleverly stage-managed attempt to reassure the Nationalist rank-and-file that all was OK. That it was nothing but the ordinary sort of family misunderstanding that all families go through. "The intended message was clear: Dr Debono was more misbehaving child than political dissenter and all he needed was a spot of gentle but firm counsel by his parents" (The Sunday Times, January 3).

But is everything OK? As Lino Spiteri, whose "old political nose" is not - contrary to his tongue-in-cheek assertion - "getting a bit blocked", has suggested in this newspaper that "there seems to have been a clear objective in Dr Debono's self-exclusion from the votes, which went beyond an inadvertent incident". In the same piece (Talking Point, December 21, 2009), Mr Spiteri drew readers' attention to this newspaper's report of December 19, which said that when "asked why he was absent at the moment (of the House votes), Dr Debono answered cryptically that he could have taken the action 'on a point of principle' but he did not elaborate".

Hmmm. Let's replay Mr Spiteri's comment: "Principle is no ordinary word. It is a heavy term. When one does something as a matter of principle, one would have thought it over carefully. The action is deliberate. Which means that Dr Debono embarrassed his side - the government - with unambiguous intent."

Regarding Dr Debono's later explanation that it was all about dignity, about not wanting to be a voice in the wilderness, Mr Spiteri is - correctly - dismissive: "the principle which made Dr Debono deliberately abstain is a stronger force that could go beyond the dignity excuse". He is equally dismissive of the scenario that sees Dr Debono reacting to the possibility of Louis Galea successfully contesting the by-election resulting from Mr Dalli's departure and returning to Cabinet, thus blocking Dr Debono's own hypothetical promotion.

One may have reserves regarding Mr Spiteri's categorical exclusion of the career opportunity motive in Dr Debono's pre-Christmas hide-and-seek ballet. Long-term planning (as opposed to leaping through immediate-term and dangerously narrow windows of opportunity) is not everybody's strength. Rationality is not inevitable, even in politics. My own view is that there was probably a mix of principles, motives, pressures and frustrations. On the other hand, nobody in his right senses - least of all the Prime Minister - can disagree with Mr Spiteri's conclusion that there is an "unusual tension in the Nationalist parliamentary group which, unlike Labour, is not used to clothes being washed in public".

In this column, I have on several occasions (and as of day one) argued that the "unusual tension" goes far beyond the House of Representatives (although it does not, evidently, spare it) and cannot be measured in terms of parliamentary arithmetic alone. That's why I spoke, and still do, of "severe turbulence" rather than "unusual tension". On January 19, 2009, a year ago almost to the day, I pointed out that: "governments are made possible by alliances: social and political alliances, by alliances of convenience and, sometimes, of conviction, by strategic and tactical alliances, by long-term and short-term alliances. Many of the alliances that this government is built on are beginning to come apart."

Dr Gonzi is not only the Prime Minister but he is also the one that sits centre stage on the government's side of Parliament. He is, therefore, not only aware of the moods of the members of his Cabinet - of those that sit on both his sides on the front bench - but also of those who sit behind him in the backbenches. They may be less visible to him because of their lesser role but, surely, their frustrated mutterings reach his ears. He knows, therefore, that there's more to his backbench's discontent than one MP's frustrations.

He knows there is more to it than the sum of the frustrations of all possibly frustrated MPs. He knows because he is not only the Prime Minister and the principal actor on the government side of Parliament but also the PN's kap (head). In his latter position, he is bound to sense the seismic rumblings that signal the coming apart of many of the alliances on which his government is built. He knows that "unusual tension" in his parliamentary group is an effect - not a cause - of these konsenturi (cracks) in the social foundations of his government. Not only has Mr Dalli's departure not solved any of his problems but has actually crippled his government further. I was never his fan, but Mr Dalli was the only one in Dr Gonzi's team capable of understanding the structural problems of our economy and, possibly, doing something about them. Economic problems will deepen the cracks.

Dr Vella blogs at watersbroken.wordpress.com.