Turkey: it’s not just for Christmas

Timing is everything in politics. So when Nationalist MP Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando suddenly broke ranks with his government last week over Malta's support for Turkey's EU accession bid, voices were immediately heard asking one crucial question.

Why now?

Pullicino Orlando's choice of timing was in fact nothing if not unorthodox. After all, Malta had publicly expressed its support for Turkey in the EU as long ago as 2006 - two years before the last election, and two years after the European Commission had officially opened negotiations with the Turkish government in 2004.

As we have since been reminded by anthropologist Ranier Fsadni, the issue had not exactly been kept secret at the time. In fact, it already had been discussed at parliamentary group level, to such a degree that Dr Michael Axiak (then a government backbencher) had given the proposal his public support.

Writing about this issue last Tuesday, Fsadni questioned why Pullicino Orlando had kept his misgivings secret at the time: despite a golden opportunity to make his opposition known before (not after) his government adopted its official pro-Turkish accession policy.

On his part, the outspoken Zebbug dentist has always maintained that he expressed his reservations from day one: not in public, but behind closed doors within the party structures themselves.

Still, this does not quite explain the sudden public outpour of apparent anger, even surprise, at a government policy which he surely must have known about for at least seven years.

The RCC connection

Even as people marveled at Pullicino Orlando's belated realisation of his own government's widely publicised position, another seemingly unrelated case of curious political timing also came to the fore.

On Friday morning, in front of the House of Representatives in Valletta, Opposition spokesman for Foreign Affairs, Dr George Vella, announced that his party would be tabling a motion of censure against Malta's permanent representative to the EU, Richard Cachia Caruana: calling on the Prime Minister to immediately demand his resignation.

At a glance the two incidents seem (not unlike Turkey's EU bid) to be continents apart. But are they
really?

Like Pullicino Orlando's outburst, Vella's announcement can also be seen to have come about rather late in the day. Dr Vella himself alluded to a Wikileaks cable that had identified Cachia Caruana as the mastermind behind Malta's 'orchestrated' reintegration into the Partnership for Peace programme... years after this had been frozen by incoming Prime Minister Alfred Sant, in distant 1996.

So again, Dr Fsadni's question is equally relevant to Labour's motion. Why now? That cable has been in the public domain for well over a year. The information it contains had been splashed all over the media months ago: leaving plenty of time for the implications to sink in.

One might point towards the government's present parliamentary crisis as an explanation; but even this has been ongoing now since January.

So why did the Opposition wait so long to spring this trap? Could Pullicino Orlando's sudden reservation about Turkey's bid be part of the answer?

Enigmatic as always, Cachia Caruana himself provides an unspoken link between the two issues. After all, the Wikileaks revelations of his involvement in the reactivation of PfP made it clear that his concern had less to do with Malta's participation in joint international military operations, than with the presence of the Maltese government (represented by himself) at crucial EU-NATO discussion groups, with all the sensitive information these would surely have involved.

Malta found itself excluded from all such meetings almost by accident: as a direct result of actions taken by Turkey, in its capacity as NATO member, in retaliation against Greek Cypriot objections to the so-called Annan plan for a reunification of the divided island.

Malta, whose accession in 2004 had been 'tied' (as it were) to Cyprus's EU bid, suffered collateral damage as a result of this ancient grudge between the two eastern Mediterranean rivals. As it worked out, Turkey's strategy to 'starve' Cyprus of vital information - by limiting access to EU-NATO forums only to PfP members - also had the unintentional side effect of negatively impacting Malta.

Cachia Caruana (we later discovered) had raised internal objections to this state of affairs with European partners, and part of the results of subsequent negotiations involved Malta's formal recognition of Turkey's EU bid.

And what about St John's?

Admittedly, the link with the Valletta Cathedral goes back a little further in time: some 500 years, in fact (after all, St John's provides the last resting place for the Jean Parisot de Valette: the man who defeated the Turks, here on local soil, in the siege of 1565).

Its connection to the man known locally as 'RCC' is slightly more recent. In 2004, Cachia Caruana was understood to be the main promoter of a controversial develop project that would have tunneled some five storeys beneath St John's: drilling deep into the architecturally sensitive Valletta underground, for an extension to house the exhibits of the Cathedral museum.

Foremost among that project's many vociferous opponents? Pullicino Orlando, of course: whose (clearly mutual) antipathy towards Cachia Caruana is all but proverbial.

This in turn might (but only might) answer earlier questions about Pullicino Orlando's sense of timing. Why did he object to Malta's Turkey position only now, and not in 2006, when he had ample chance?

Perhaps because it is only now (and not in 2006) that the full extent of Cachia Caruana's involvement in Malta's approval of that bid became apparent.

And why, then, did the Opposition wait until after his outburst last week to present its motion of censure against the permanent EU Rep: a motion it could have presented a year ago at the earliest?

Could it be because - unlike the last time it presented a comparable motion (i.e., last January) - it now has more confidence that at least one government MP (and only one is needed) will vote in favour?

Of course, by now we have clearly departed the world of hard facts for more speculative pastures. One suspects, however, that we shall find out soon enough, if the Opposition's presumed confidence is well founded.