Simon Busuttil offers guarantee for the future

In case you tuned in late and missed the subliminal message that underscored Simon Busuttil's opening comments in tonight's PBS conference, don't worry - he would repeat the same general thrust with practically every subsequent declaration.

The Nationalist Party has made mistakes in the past five years, he freely admitted (several times over, in fact). But Busuttil himself was not around to do anything about those mistakes at the time when they occurred.

Now, however, things are different. Now he is the party's deputy leader... so if the PN is returned to power next Saturday, there will be Simon Busuttil in its ranks to personally see to it that the PN does live up to its promises of putting on a more humane face, etc.

That, at any rate, was the innuendo that accompanied nearly all his contributions to this evening's debate... which otherwise comprised the usual mantra of how (in spite of all these mistakes) the PN has nonetheless succeeded in weathering the economic storm, and has defied the European pattern by creating jobs and presiding over a period of economic growth... unlike Spain, Cyprus, and so forth... and therefore remains the safe choice for people who valued the important things in life: i.e., work, education and health.

With hindsight, it remains unclear whether this apparent over-reliance on Simon Busuttil - a campaign strategy which was heavily underscored even by the mere fact that the PN chose to send its deputy leader (and not Gonzi himself) to speak on its behalf - forms part of a bid to somehow distance the party from its own leader: who, in a curious reversal of the 2008 campaign, may no longer be considered an electoral asset for the PN.

If so, it is a strange message to put forward so late in the campaign - and in fact journalists present could hardly mask their own surprise, when Simon Busuttil very nonchalantly gave the impression that he was attributing all the PN's present unpopularity to mistakes made in the past by an invisible Lawrence Gonzi... mistakes which he himself would soon rectify.

Yet Busuttil stuck to this line repeatedly throughout the programme. Asked by my colleague Jurgen Balzan why the PN had failed to implement so many promises contained in its 2008 manifesto - a manifesto that he himself had authored - Busuttil simply stated that while he had indeed authored the manifesto, he was not part of the government that was subsequently entrusted to translate its contents into action.

"So I cannot comment on the government's failure to keep those promises," was his rather revealing reply.

Oddly enough, the same consideration did not stop Busuttil from loudly singing the same government's praises over a number of successes in the fields of work, education and health... despite the fact that he wasn't part of the government that had registered those successes, either.

But it was the extreme confidence in his own abilities to succeed - where Gonzi and everyone else has so far failed - that would ultimately emerge as the single clearest leitmotif of his performance tonight.

Occasionally, this same self-assurance would translate into a number of truly remarkable claims, such as: "it's not true that the PN has been in power for 25 years - it's only been five years, since that was when the PN last won an election."

Over to the questions now, and it was veteran journalist Noel Grima who opened fire with a query on Busuttil's own role as the Prime Minister's 'special delegate' to civil society over the last two years.

In that capacity, Busuttil has already had plenty of time to build bridges to the aggrieved and the disillusioned. So why are so many still clearly aggrieved?

Busuttil instantly deflected the inherent suggestion that the scope of this position was to 'accommodate' demands through clientelism. But he broadly acknowledged that the PN had indeed been less than successful in its efforts to 'focus on people'.

His proposed solution? "My personal commitment in this campaign is to do my best to address this defect once and for all."

Meanwhile, if Malta experienced a slight tremor at around 8.45pm last night, it may well have had something to do with the collective reactions of the local hunting community to what Busuttil said next.

Referring to his earlier days (before 2003) as the head of the Malta-EU Information Centre, Busuttil said that "my job was to explain to the people how Malta's accession to the EU would affect them. People know that I did this honestly..."

It fell to One TV's Jonathan Attard to raise one aspect of the PN's performance that did not exactly shine with honesty... the honoraria issue.

Asked the rather blunt question of how much of this weekly increase was actually returned by MPs, Busuttil returned the equally blunt answer that: "I was not an MP, so I did not receive any salary increase."

OK, but how much money was returned? Again, Busuttil stuck to his earlier line that 'the PN had made mistakes' - the honoraria being one such example - but the moment it realised this mistake, it took action to rectify the matter.

Nonetheless, Busuttil stopped short of supplying figures: insisting that, because he was not himself involved, he did not know the precise sum that had to be returned (which incidentally raises the separate question of why the PN would send a representative who had no answers to specific questions about the PN government's own record.)

Nor was this the only question to remain conspicuously unanswered. Asked why the PN became the only party to ignore a questionnaire sent by the Malta Gay Rights Movement, Busuttil frankly admitted that... he hadn't the faintest idea.

"I don't know. I might have received the email, but simply didn't notice it in the deluge of emails. It might have ended up my desk, but I can't say for sure."

Paradoxically (given how shakily this reply began) Busuttil somehow managed to turn this admission into perhaps his strongest moment of the entire evening.

"Our commitment is to pass the law against discrimination - and all other pending laws, including the whistleblowers' act and party financing - in our first 100 days in office. So in 100 days' time, you will be able to challenge us on whether he have lived up to this promise."

On the issue of gay rights alone, Busuttil reminded viewers that his work as an MEP had involved drawing up a powerful statement against homophobia which would be endorsed by the European parliament.

Elsewhere, a rather bland question about the PN's energy proposal provided Busuttil with a platform on which to bash Labour's equivalent proposal on all the perceived flaws that have been repeated throughout this campaign. Malta does not need a new power station; the timeframes are unrealistic; Labour proposals will not decrease tariffs by 25% but rather increase them by 5%; and of course, the inevitable reference to 'two gas tanks the size of Mosta Dome each'.

Busuttil also mounted a spirited defence of the PN's choice to wage a 'dirty campaign'. Pointing out how a court case halfway through the election had revealed recordings in which Toni Abela (PL deputy leader) had admitted failing to report a suspected case of drug trafficking to the police, Busuttil insisted that this marked the real difference between the two parties: the PN took action against illegality; Labour did not.

But while he did at moments hit the right tone of sincerity - certainly, his admissions of past mistakes makes a welcome change from the self-aggrandisement we have come to expect from the PN these days - my gut feeling is that Busuttil's remarkably self-reliant performance tonight will be seized on by political opponents as a display of typical Nationalist 'arrogance'.

And who knows? Perhaps that's all part of the plan...