‘Call an election’, PN executive tells Gonzi
Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi faced calls for early elections from party officials who warned that ‘the PN cannot continue humiliating itself’.
Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi has been urged by members of the Nationalist Party executive council to call a general election without delay, in a bid to 'clean out the party stables' and avoid causing further harm to the PN as a whole.
MaltaToday is reliably informed that at a meeting of the party executive last week, Gonzi faced a large number of officials who expressed concern at how the recent internal rifts between government MPs and the party leadership were causing untold damage to the PN's reputation.
"The party cannot continue humiliating itself like this," PN members reportedly told their party leader, adding that the longer this situation is allowed to continue, the more irreparable the harm it will cause.
Gonzi is however understood to have staved off calls for an early election, arguing that choosing the election date remains his own prerogative as Prime Minister.
He has so far been publicly supported in this view by his predecessor, former President Dr Eddie Fenech Adami, who last Saturday said that "it was the government's duty to govern to the end of the legislature in the national interest."
Officially, the party line in public has consistently echoed this sentiment to the letter. And in an interview at the beginning of this month - immediately after the forced resignation of minister Carm Mifsud Bonnici, and shortly before winning the subsequent vote of confidence - Lawrence Gonzi made it clear that he had no intention of going to the polls before the expiry of his government's term in mid-2013.
"If the PN wins the vote of confidence, it has the moral duty to continue governing," he said. "We will not shirk our responsibilities. Sometimes the easy way out is to go for an election. Fortunately for this country, my party has never gone for easy solutions."
However, other party officials are understood to be less enthusiastic about delaying elections any further. Following the open revolt of three MPs, the PN executive took the unprecedented step of formally 'censuring' three sitting government MPs - in other words, 10% of the PN's own parliamentary group.
On condition of anonymity, some PN officials even told this newspaper that it would be better for the PN to lose an election today, and go into Opposition for an interim period. This, they said, would create an opportunity to 'weed out the rubbish', and rebuild the party from scratch.
Defeat at the polls would be a distinct possibility, if elections were held now. According to MaltaToday's latest survey - which IT minister Austin Gatt recently admitted mirrors the PN's own internal surveys almost exactly - the PN is currently lagging 12 percentage points behind the Labour Party, while Opposition leader Joseph Muscat leads Gonzi by nine points in trust ratings.
The PN had earlier succeeded in improving its standings slightly since April: narrowing a previous 14-point to only nine points.
The latest survey results came after the crisis that led to Mifsud Bonnici's resignation at the end of May.