Lawrence Gonzi between a rock and a hard place in new Debono debacle

There was a surreal moment during Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi's visit to the Tal-Handaq industrial estate on Saturday.

Asked directly about his current problems with maverick backbencher Franco Debono, the prime minister casually brushed the entire issue aside by asserting that "there was no instability" currently affecting his government.

The comment was duly picked up and reproduced as a headline; and in the accompanying video you could almost feel the aura of disbelief spreading around him as he spoke. Within minutes of the online post, sarcastic comments came flooding in from all directions: mostly variations of the old joke that 'denial' is 'not just a river in Egypt'.

And in fact one struggles to appreciate how a prime minister can so utterly fail to acknowledge that which is so conspicuously evident to everyone else.

Leaving aside the so-called 'academic' argument that his government is now actually illegitimate (having lost the 'artificial' parliamentary majority awarded him by the 1986 Constitutional amendment) the fact remains that Gonzi's administration now stands or falls at the whim of any of its backbenchers, in a scenario where it does not command a House majority at all.

If this does not qualify as 'instability', then the question arises: what on earth does?

Crisis? What crisis?

To make matters more bizarre still, the single most problematic of Lawrence Gonzi's backbenchers has now broken his summer silence with a veritable tsunami of online criticism.

Just days before Gonzi's dismissive assertion at Tal-Handaq, Franco Debono had accused his prime minister of trying to bribe him with a chauffeur-driven car (among other goodies) ahead of the parliamentary vote on Carm Mifsud Bonnici last June.... after which, he branded Gonzi a 'liar' for denying the claim.

Earlier still, Debono had threatened to take legal action against the PN over its decision to ban him, along with two other MPs, from contesting elections on the party ticket... a threat which officially still stands today, and which also has a precedent in the form of a successful lawsuit by former PN candidate Herbert Ganado.

Much now hinges on the outcome of a Nationalist Party executive meeting, to be held at the party's Pieta' headquarters tomorrow evening, which will discuss a request by Debono to overturn the ban.

Meanwhile, the same Franco Debono has now presented a private member's bill targeting the choice of heavy fuel oil for the Delimara Power Station: an issue which continues to hover like a cloud of fly-ash over the present government's environmental and administrative credentials.

And at the time of writing this article he has just hinted at yet another controversial private member's bill - this time focusing on his own private hobbyhorse: the hunting and trapping situation.

Naturally it remains to be seen when or even if any of these motions will even be discussed (still less voted on) in the House. But the signals emanating from Hal-Ghaxaq at the moment seem to strongly indicate that there will be no easy return to Parliament for the Gonzi administration following its staggering 12-week summer recess.

And that's just Debono, who is by no means the only troublesome factor for Gonzi at the moment. A few weeks earlier, another backbencher (Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando) resigned from the party altogether, and now sits as an independent MP in an uneasy 'coalition' with the PN. All of which conspires to project the image of a prime minister now simultaneously held to ransom from multiple directions.

Diminishing options

Yet Gonzi's apparent defiance of reality appears absurd for another reason also.

At the time of his comment, news had only just emerged that Malta's deficit had grown by an unexpected €333.3 million this year - largely thanks to a sharp increase in government spending, in what is likely to be the last spree before the coming election.

Gonzi's reaction to this development was indistinguishable from his reaction to the Debono factor. He simply refused to acknowledge that the problem even exists - arguing it away as part of an annual 'cycle' that will somehow fall into place by the end of the year.

But for all his efforts to project an image of upbeat nonchalance, Gonzi couldn't conceal the fact that the timing of this piece of news was deeply inauspicious for his government.

Not only does it impart the impression that Gonzi himself (once touted as a 'safe pair of hands' on the tiller of the Maltese economy) has now allowed control of the country's finances to slip through his fingers.

It also suggests that Gonzi's administration will now find it difficult, if not downright impossible, to resort to the traditional electoral strategy of any party in government: i.e., that of 'buying' electoral support through a last-minute spate of freebies, favours and capital projects.

The upshot is that Gonzi is now very clearly no longer in control of his own destiny. Much more beside, he has to rely on uncooperative MPs like Debono if he intends to see his term through to its end.

But is that really Gonzi's intention? The latest developments in the ongoing Franco-Gonzi stand-off suggest that it might not be... that, paradoxical though this may sound, he may actually want to precipitate a crisis that will bring his own government down.

No room to move

Part of the solution to this conundrum takes us back to last July's decision to issue a formal 'condemnation' of Debono, Pullicino Orlando and Jesmond Mugliett, over their defiance of the party whip on two separate parliamentary motions.

Without going into too much detail, suffice it to say that the party leadership had been pressured (according to Debono, by Austin Gatt) into taking a hard-line position with the three rebel MPs, largely in a bid to save face after the loss of these two votes translated into forced resignations by senior officials loyal to Gonzi.

In the cases of Pullicino Orlando and Mugliett, this censure proved to be largely ritualistic. Both these MPs had already precluded any political future with the PN, and seem quite willing to fade quietly into the background.

Not so Debono, however; and from this perspective, the decision to ban the ambitious Ghaxaq MP can be seen to have straitjacketed the Nationalist Party and limited its options ahead of Parliament's re-opening next month.

For one thing, the PN cannot now retract the ban on Debono's candidature without also appearing weak with the electorate.

Nor can it do so without giving the impression of having caved into Debono's blackmail: a situation that would directly and irretrievably undermine Gonzi's authority as both party leader and prime minister.

At the same time, the exclusion of a sitting MP from future elections also leaves that MP with very little choice but to intensify his revolt. Debono must now either swallow the bitter pill that he is no longer a persona grata within Nationalist circles, and (presumably) back off with his tail between his legs, never to be heard of again in political circles... or else he must retaliate by denying the government the co-operation it requires to see its term through.

There is no middle road.

This in turn means that both sides of the equation are now faced with the same, rather stark choice between defeat and humiliation. Gonzi must either stand firm with Debono, thereby losing his support and with it the seat of government; or else cave in to the rebel MP and be visibly outclassed by his opponent.

In Debono's case the options are arguably narrower still. If the ban is not overturned tomorrow evening, his only 'honourable' way out would be to live up to an earlier threat, and vote against his government on a confidence bill (e.g, the forthcoming budget). Alternatively he could cross the floor (or declare himself an independent MP, like Pullicino Orlando) - which would automatically bring about a crisis of the kind last seen in 1998.

Both these options ultimately entail the same consequence: early elections, at a time when the PN faces a decidedly uphill electoral struggle. Incidentally they both also spell an end to Debono;s career with the PN... at least for the foreseeable future.

A lose-lose situation

Even without the benefit of hindsight, it remains incongruous that the Nationalist Party - an institution more commonly associated with political shrewdness than folly - could have engineered such a spectacularly obvious lose-lose situation for itself.

Yet this need hardly surprise us, as the same party had behaved almost exactly the same way in the build-up to last year's divorce referendum, with equally dismal results.

One is tempted to simply explain away this phenomenon as a case of poor political judgment on the part of a prime minister who has been tried, tested and found severely wanting (and for what it's worth, that is precisely my own reading of the situation).

But to be fair there is an alternative theory: that Lawrence Gonzi actually wants to precipitate an early election... only he would much rather be able to blame the situation on something other than his own inability to govern.

According to this interpretation of events, it is Debono who has unwittingly walked into the trap - engineering a situation whereby the Nationalist Party can afterwards absolve itself of all blame by posing as the helpless victim of a vengeful, spiteful and ultimately unreasonable maverick.

Considering that Gonzi has time and again prefaced his entire position in this stand-off with the observation that "he does not want to do another Sant" (i.e., he does not want to be held responsible for aborting his own government, as Sant arguably did in 1998) it suddenly appears reasonable that he would step up the pressure on Debono, and provoke him into assuming that mantle himself.

Placed in the context of an increasingly impossible economic scenario, in which the present government is unlikely to come up with a promising budget before the election, Debono's revolt may ultimately provide Lawrence Gonzi with the one thing that may save his place in history - an escape route.