Where does all this lead?

On Thursday, the PN executive announced that the three 'rebel' government MPs would not be allowed to contest the next election on the PN ticket.

Considering that two of these three MPs - Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando and Jesmond Mugliett - had already made it abundantly clear that they would not contest the forthcoming election anyway, this latest development would appear to leave everything exactly as it was before the vote was taken.

With one significant difference: Gonzi's government has finally ceased to pussyfoot around the central issue of its own backbencher revolt. Following this latest action, there can be no shying away from the fact that government is officially at 'war' with three of its own members... though how this same war will develop in the immediate future remains difficult to guess.

One thing is however certain: government can no longer rely on its majority in the House, especially now that one of the three (Franco Debono) has openly declared he will no longer support Lawrence Gonzi's administration 'so long as it has Austin Gatt as a minister'.

Admittedly, this does not de facto translate into a Constitutional crisis. Parliament is currently in recess: which also means that the three MPs will simply not have the opportunity to vote against their government until October at the earliest.

From this perspective alone, the Nationalist Party clearly played its cards with its customary political finesse. The timing of events was painstakingly contrived in order to preemptively limit the MPs' options, while maximise the PN's own room for manoeuvre: starting with the hurried closure of Parliament itself, which effectively robbed the MPs of the only weapon in their arsenal.

This is all very clever from a purely political viewpoint. But the sad truth of the matter is that the ingenuity at work behind the scenes has clearly been invested only in ensuring that Gonzi survives for as long as possible... to the exclusion of all other considerations.

Hence the exorbitant price at which this latest Pyrrhic victory has been bought: effectively, all government's resources have now been channelled only into its own survival, with little or nothing to spare for the many issues that urgently need to be addressed on a national level.

Gonzi himself has also paid a price, this time in terms of credibility. Thursday's meeting was supposed to reinforce the view of a prime minister fully in control of own his party and government. But the way the event unfolded, very strongly suggested the opposite. The decision to take the vote by show of hands, in such an atmosphere of tension and belligerence, smacked heavily of the suspicion that Gonzi could not trust the executive council with a secret ballot. Under such circumstances, one wonders how much of the 'unanimous' support he received on Thursday was actually genuine.

Worse still for Gonzi's image was the sudden reappearance of Eddie Fenech Adami at the executive council meeting. By turning up the way he did, Fenech Adami merely underscored the fact (often complained about in private by Nationalist supporters) that what is currently lacking in the PN is precisely the style of leadership associated with his own long reign - a reign which, unlike Gonzi's, was also characterised by unswerving support from his parliamentary group.

To be fair, however, the blame for this state of affairs cannot be laid completely at the prime minister's door. The backbenchers themselves must also be held accountable for the impossible demands they have occasionally made of their party: Debono, for instance, for failing to back down when the prime minister gave into his request to split the justice and home affairs minister; and Pullicino Orlando for insisting to expel Gonzi's staunchest supporter (Richard Cachia Caruana) after he had received a vote of censure in parliament.

All the same, the government's handling of such matters was far from unimpeachable, and what we are left with is a grossly untenable situation for any country to find itself in. Indeed, one would be justified in asking whether it truly is in the national interest for the Gonzi administration to see through its full term (as, understandably enough, Gonzi himself has all along argued).

But how can it possibly be in "the national interest", for the national interest itself to be constantly sidelined and made subordinate to the interest of the PN and its leader? Who gains from a situation where Parliament has been unable to function for over half a year? And how does prolonging the status quo benefit anyone at all... including Gonzi himself, who is ultimately only prolonging his own humiliation by clinging on so desperately for so long?

As for the rebels, at this stage there is effectively little or nothing stopping them from breaking away from the PN altogether: either to form a new party, or more likely still to set themselves up as independent MPs until the next election. Again, one will have to wait until October for the resulting crisis to be felt in full force... but this is perhaps the

best thing that has emerged from Thursday's showdown.

With government finally biting the bullet cutting its rebels loose, it is no longer a question of 'if' a Constitutional crisis occurs... but rather, 'when': with the likeliest answer remaining next October, immediately upon the reopening of Parliament.