[ANALYSIS] Changing of the guard

If Friday's vote was a landslide victory for Simon Busuttil - the candidate who had gambled the most in this contest: not least his seat in the European parliament - the election as a whole proved to be a far closer-run affair than many had predicted.

Myself included, I am the first to admit. My own prediction of a single-candidate cosmetic charade - with all the implications this would have had for the political health of the Nationalist Party - turned out in the end to be hopelessly off the mark.

Far from being dead in the water, the PN proved this week that it is still very much alive. Indeed the entire contest could be seen as an act of emergency cardiopulmonary resuscitation straight out of an episode of 'ER'... only with Simon Busuttil instead of George Clooney, shocking the otherwise lifeless PN heart back into action through ventricular fibrillation.

This marks a rare instance of good news for the typical Nationalist voter: as can be evidenced by an almost audible collective sigh of relief among what seems to be a vast majority of the PN-leaning public.

But while Nationalist supporters may have cause to celebrate, the inner organs of the party itself have every reason to be apprehensive about the same result. For the second time in quick succession, the PN's own policy direction has been exposed as 'out of synch' with the national mood. And while the party has put on its best festive outfit to mark the occasion, it knows full well that once the celebrations are over there are hard and bitter pills to be swallowed all round.

I know Facebook comments are not perhaps the best measure of the popular pulse; but this one comment (posted by a self-avowed Nationalist) seems to sum up the feelings of many PN sympathisers from outside the party structures: "Congratulations Simon Busuttil. Thank goodness you won! However, if we needed further proof that most of the Cabinet is out of touch with the party, this election race is all the evidence we need..."

A defeat for the old guard

On paper at least, the electoral stats bear this comment out to the full. Tonio Fenech's deputy leadership bid did not, after all, take place in a vacuum. Fenech, who only recently aligned himself in no uncertain terms with the confessional wing of the PN, went on to attract the active support of a staggering 80% of the Cabinet of Ministers... including many perceived to be privileged members of the party's 'inner sanctum'.

Looking back at the Nationalist MPs who had openly endorsed Fenech against Busuttil two weeks ago, what emerges is a curious collage of the 'old guard' and the so-called 'new faces'. Ministers Mario de Marco, Chris Said, Jason Azzopardi, Giovanna Debono and Dolores Cristina all threw their weight behind Fenech... as did Parliamentary Secretaries Mario Galea and Clyde Puli, and backbenchers like Charlo' Bonnici, Robert Arrigo and Beppe Fenech Adami.

Busuttil's support, by way of contrast, was all but non-existent. Indeed the only Cabinet member to actively back him was Joe Cassar... while his most outspoken supporter was arguably also the most glaring albatross around his neck: Franco Debono, who predictably attempted to link Busuttil's win last Friday with a victory for his own preferred platform of 'reconciliation'.

To be fair this would not in itself mean very much, were Friday's event merely a contest to decide the next PN deputy leader. But in reality we all know the contest was about much, much more than just that. It was also about the immediate policy direction of the PN as a whole; and by defying the express wishes of 80% of the Cabinet, the PN's 900 councillors declared in no uncertain terms that they were unhappy with the direction the party is currently taking... and as a consequences, they voted for change.

In view of the final outcome, the implications are rather worrying for those Nationalists (including practically the entire Cabinet) who still identify with the confessional approach favoured by Fenech. Not only has the traditional Nationalist Party 'establishment' clearly backed the losing horse, and has emerged from the debacle with egg-yolk dripping from their collective faces... but the winning horse also ran the race on the buzz-word of "change": making this a straight battle between the Nationalist party's present policies, and the need to start afresh.

The implications are inescapable: Friday's vote was de facto a vote of no-confidence in the present administration of the party... all but a tiny fragment of which had publicly favoured retaining the status quo.

The spectre of divorce

All this has weighty implications for the party's present leadership, which now finds itself admonished and diminished by its own party's administrative council. Viewed in the wider context of a decade of questionable policy decisions, Busuttil's victory gives voice and strength to that groundswell of frustrated and disgruntled Nationalists who no longer recognise their party in its new incarnation of 'GonziPN'. More worryingly still for the prime minister, Friday's outspoken demand for a different direction was not in itself an isolated event without precedent. On the contary, it can be seen to follow on from similar scenarios in the recent past, in which the PN has likewise found itself at odds with larghe sections its own support-base.

The most obvious example is also arguably the most relevant. Lurking in the background of this election was the spectre of the recent divorce referendum... and its disastrous aftermath for the selfsame PN establishment that supported Tonio Fenech (who himself had come to emblemise the PN's now forgotten 'anti-divorce stand'... especially with his memorable comment about Our Lady 'weeping' at the prospect of a positive referendum result).

Admittedly this may be an unfair assessment, given his altogether less outlandish views on other more practical matters. But in the popular psyche Tonio Fenech (rightly or wrongly) came to be associated precisely with the sort of archaic and regressive 'way of doing politics' that the PN has been desperate to put behind it ever since losing that referendum in May 2011.

From this perspective, Fenech's overwhelming rejection by the PN councillors plunges the Nationalist Party's 'old guard' into deep crisis. For it was not just with divorce that the conservative wing of the PN Cabinet has been exposed as out of touch with reality. Even the recent controversy surrounding Tonio Borg's nomination to the Commission - without which this entire contest would not have taken place at all - had exposed a certain duality within the PN: whose most hard-boiled conservatives were heard speaking one language in Malta, and another very different language before an audience of MEPs in Brussels... as if in tacit acknowledgement of how very un-European their own 'Religio et Patria' fantasies really are, when viewed in the cold light of European reality.

The Sword of Debono

But the hangover of Friday's election goes well beyond the obvious dichotomy between the two incompatible faces of the PN: i.e. the socially regressive face we associate with the anti-divorce lobby, and all its accompanying religious fanaticism... and the pragmatic and strategically avant-garde politics we otherwise expect from the PN when dealing with such issues as the economy. 

Hanging over the entire exercise was the 'Sword of Debono' (if Damocles will forgive the temporary replacement): the rebel backbencher who had predictably tried to turn this election into one about himself... pitting his own 'reconciliation' mantra, against the perceived entrenchment of an exclusionist 'oligarchy', which would have been vindicated had Fenech won on Friday.

Franco Debono's interpretation is naturally coloured by his own self-interest in the outcome. But even without this consideration, it remains a fact that Busuttil and Fenech had publicly espoused very different strategies on how to deal with the Debono factor.

It remains debatable whether Busuttil really intends to rehabilitate Franco Debono and readmit him to the fold (as Debono clearly seems to think is not only possible, but imminent). Certainly he gave that fleeting impression, though he retracted at least part of it in the run-up to Friday's vote.

But there can be no real doubt whatsoever as to the inflexibility of Fenech's outright 'No' to any future rapprochement with Debono (and by extension, Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando and Jesmond Mugliett). So even if Debono's interpretation may not hold with regard to Busuttil, one cannot really blame the PN outcast for interpreting Fenech's resounding defeat as an equally resounding rejection of the Nationalist Party executive's decision to ban him from contesting the next election.

Executive versus council

And this brings us to the underlying tension within the party structures, that this whole episode has now dragged into the hideous light. The decision to ban Franco Debono (and the other two MPs) was taken by the PN executive council. The choice of Busuttil over Fenech, on the other hand, was made by the PN's administrative council - and the two entities are not (as I had hitherto, erroneously believed) the same thing at all.

Bearing in mind that it was the executive (and not the administrative council that took that regrettable decision to tie the PN to an anti-divorce platform, months before a referendum it would go on to lose... what we are left with is the vision of a party in open civil war.

Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi may well come out of all this unscathed (let's face it, he has a remarkable talent for this); yet he himself has been the lynchpin for all the mistaken decisions taken by the executive, and which later had to be corrected by the party administration.

And of course it is always others to pay the price for Gonzi's mistakes. It was to please Gonzi that the divorce gaffe was committed in the first place; and it was to spare Gonzi's blushes, that Tonio Fenech took the decision (arguably harmful to his own political career) to throw his hat into the ring and thereby avoid the embarrassment of a non-contest.

Friday's election brought this essential contradiction out into open where it can be seen by all and sundry. And the pattern that emerges is the same: the Prime Minister redirects the party in a new and uncharted direction; the party structures are left to pick up the pieces and correct the mistakes in the chosen course.

And yet it is never Gonzi himself who takes the fall for these mistakes. It is always his minions, and this latest instance is no exception.

On this occasion, not only did Tonio Fenech fall on his own sword for the benefit of his leader; but nearly all the Cabinet decided to commit ritual seppuku with him.

One can only wonder how many other foot-soldiers will have to be sacrificed, before the same party administrations plucks up the courage to make the one change that will salvage the party altogether.