A rose by any other name? GonziPN’s ‘half-hearted coalition’

Additional reporting by Jurgen Balzan.

Is Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando's breakaway arrangement with Lawrence Gonzi a 'coalition'?

In politics, a coalition is as pact between political parties but also individuals to cooperation in joint action and working together on a government programme.

In the case of Pullicino Orlando, the MP has decided to cooperate with the rest of the PN parliamentary group to carry out its electoral mandate, with the reasoning that he was elected by over 5,000 PN voters and that he owes it to his electors to see that Gonzi carries out his five-year term.

However, he expects to be a consulted on matters that are not part of the electoral mandate, which gives him a certain degree of power even though Pullicino Orlando has set the parameters to this leverage.

If Pullicino Orlando agrees to the electoral programme on which he was elected, then Gonzi will have no problem in steaming ahead with his legislative package right into 2013.

On the other hand, Pullicino Orlando can be expected not to comply with voting demands on issues or laws or motions he deems incompatible with the PN electoral programme. Demanding consultation in such cases, he will be key to influencing or tempering such parliamentary actions.

In this sense, Pullicino Orlando is 'divorced' from the Nationalist Party but living under the same roof... or he now lives as a political concubine freed from Lawrence Gonzi's overarching influence.

On his part, Gonzi has not entirely lost his one-seat majority. Pullicino Orlando was always wary that he does not want to go down in political history as having brought down a PN government, so Gonzi can morally keep the MP to his word in insisting that the PN's legislative programme is carried out - and this guarantees that Gonzi will see Budget 2013 pass when parliament reconvenes in October.

If anything, Gonzi's parliamentary majority is now reformulated and tempered. The GonziPN project he failed to curate - almost a loose coalition of MPs in league with the Prime Minister - was taken to its logical conclusion by the unhappy Pullicino Orlando.

It remains to be seen whether the electorate will be viewing such an arrangement as suspicious, perhaps even pushing them not to go for cross-party votes on the ballot sheet to ensure sizeable parliamentary majorities that can govern comfortably.

Alternattiva Demokratika chairperson Michael Briguglio says Gonzi's arrangement is not a coalition. "It is more of a statement of convenience that the prime minister is using to cling on to power. And that's how people are seeing it."

"A coalition is when two or more parties work together on a joint programme. But now we have an MP who has resigned from the parliamentary group and offered the prime minister a temporary arrangement which allows Gonzi to govern. It is volatile.

"With AD in a parliamentary coalition, we would not be prima donnas revbelling on petty issues, as the Nationalist backbenchers did. It wouldn't work in our interest, it would be political suicide. Working in a coalition means working on a common programme as happens in the rest of Europe, voting together on money bills, but voting freely on issues that are not part of the common programme."

Historian Henry Frendo on his part describes the situation as a "half-hearted coalition", saying that Pullicino Orlando's letter and the Prime Minister's apparent blessing indicate that the agreement reached is a "de facto coalition".

"But this is not a conventional type of coalition... the Pullicino Orlando-PN agreement is different to the coalition between Gorg Borg Olivier's PN and Pawlu Boffa's Malta Workers' Party in 1951, which was a coalition between two parties who contested elections separately."

Frendo described the current situation as having a dissenting MP who symbolically detached himself from the PN, after taking umbrage at two stalwarts of the party.

" Pullicino Orlando's decision to resign from the party can be compared to Labour MP Pawlu Carachi's decision to hold an independent seat following the 1955 election and Wenzu Mintoff's situation following his dismissal from the Labour Party in 1989."

However, Frendo expressed his doubt on whether both cases can be described as a coalition. "To a certain extent, Pullicino Orlando has acquired more power. Since he will be consulted on matters which are not included in the 2008 electoral manifesto he turned himself into a qualified kingmaker.

"Then again, all MPs should be consulted by the Prime Minister on matters which are not included in the electoral manifesto. It is what all MPs ought to expect."

Frendo said that it is very likely that the Gonzi administration will call an election in 2013 after approving an election budget at the end of this year.