Manuel Mallia: An investment gone sour

In an interview published on MaltaToday in 2012 Manuel Mallia revealed how he was directly approached by Joseph Muscat to stand as a candidate weeks after an “accidental” encounter on Christmas day in 2008 when both were with their families for lunch at a hotel restaurant.

“That time we had just had our twins and as we sat with our tables practically back-to-back Muscat turned and congratulated me and my partner on the newborns…

Joseph and Michelle had twins too, and an interesting conversation ensued on caring for newborn twins.”

Subsequent to that lunch, an unexpected invitation to a New Year’s Eve party placed them at a venue where Muscat and his wife were also among the invitees.

“It was shortly after midnight of New Year’s eve in 2008 when Muscat – surrounded by a number of people – called me and told me that he wished that I would contest the general election for the Labour Party,” he explained, adding that he immediately replied with a question: “do you know my background?”

A question of vetting?

“Yes, I do,” was Muscat’s answer and things stopped there until some weeks after he received a phone call from the Labour Party to meet with Muscat, and the two established a rapport which Mallia described as “quite close.”

In   hindsight the interview exposes a major flaw in the transformation of the Labour party under Muscat’s leadership into a presidential movement where the leader directly recruited candidates in the absence of a vetting process by party structures.

Party insiders have noted that so-called star candidates like Mallia who were chosen by Muscat were not subjected to the same rigorous selection process as other candidates, before they were approved by the general conference. 

Before the election traditional labour candidates like George Vella, Leo Brincat, Marie Louise Coleiro Preca and Evarist Bartolo were sidelined to make room for “star candidates” on prime time TV. Mallia himself was regularly chosen to represent the party on programmes like BondiPlus. 

Surely back then politicians like Mallia served as a walking advert for Muscat’s inclusive movement and were thus a powerful asset in the bid to lure disgruntled Nationalists.

But Mallia came with a baggage, a criminal lawyer with a large client base, which exposed him to potential conflicts of interest. 

As a former president of the Casino Maltese and legal representative of Paceville nightclubs he had ties with a wide spectrum of influence wielders in Maltese society.

His credentials among traditional PN voters were reinforced by his role because the criminal lawyer had led the oral submissions in court, which acquitted Pietru Pawl Busuttil in 1987 following a police frame-up for the murder of Raymond Caruana.

In the 1970’s Mallia held posts in the PN’s section and district committees in Sliema and in Gzira but never made it to the party’s list of election candidates.

Mallia’s electoral gamble paid off.

In the election Mallia not only managed to get elected from two PN leaning electoral districts but became Labour’s front runner on both districts, gaining 2,526 votes in the tenth and  2,950 in the ninth district.

The lure of ex Nationalists

People like Manuel Mallia, Deborah Schembri, Marisa Micallef and Cyrus Engerer proved to be more effective than any billboard or slogan in attracting former Nationalist voters. 

Yet in the case of both Mallia and Engerer, Muscat’s choices were to backfire on his party. In fact the fate of these two politicians underscores the contrast with the less accident-prone party stalwarts and old timers like Evarist Bartolo, Leo Brincat and George Vella.

While Engerer was withdrawn from standing as a candidate in last June’s MEP elections after a court sentence found him guilty on appeal in a case involving the dissemination of embarrassing photographs of a former boy friend, the latest episode exposes serious flaws in Mallia’s political judgement, particularly in his choice of close collaborators.

Apart from choosing Sheehan as driver, his chief of staff Silvio Scerri, another former Nationalist, was also embroiled in various controversies during the past months. In August 2013 opposition spokesperson Jason Azzopardi called for Scerri’s resignation after revealing a sworn declaration, which he claimed, showed that Scerri used a convicted criminal to fix a meeting with a wrongly accused man. The government denied the charge.

Explaining the PM’s procrastination

The Mallia case also exposes another flaw in Muscat’s pre electoral strategy, namely the reliance on a personal rapport with the new converts, which is not mediated through official party channels. 

In 2012 Mallia explained how he was given a front seat at the party general conference soon after his new year’s eve anointment and how he was called in by Muscat to discuss issues related to the controversial VAT charge on car registration.

“Since then we kept regular contact by phone, e-mail and text messages, and we discuss a number of matters.”

The personal rapport between the Labour leader and Mallia could explain the Prime Minister’s procrastination in the last weeks when faced with calls for the Minister’s resignation immediately after the shooting incident involving his driver. 

Initially the PM hinted that the Minister might not have been politically responsible for what had happened.

The day after the incident, instead of suspending Mallia, Muscat limited himself to expressing “anger and disgust” at the driver’s behaviour after meeting Mallia at Castille. 

The following Saturday Muscat hinted that the Minister might not be politically responsible for what had happened.

 “If the magisterial inquiry shows that Mallia knew of what was happening or gave instructions to the driver, then there is political responsibility to carry. But if the driver acted on his own irresponsible initiative, the matter is different,” he told Ghandi Xi Nghid presenter Andrew Azzopardi on Radju Malta.

Even in his reply to Simon Busuttil’s budget speech, Muscat praised Mallia for ridding the prisons of drugs. 

Moreover Mallia himself seemed to be under the impression that he would be exonerated by the inquiry, declaring in parliament that he would answer questions on his role in the incident when the opposition’s motion of no confidence is discussed in parliament. 

Days later he was given a hero’s welcome in St George Square during an official public consultation meeting on the budget in what many interpreted as an organised show of support for the beleaguered minister.

A promise of accountability

Ironically one reason cited by Mallia in the 2012 interview for joining Muscat’s movement was the promise of greater accountability.

“Where is the transparency in the way certain people in office perform their public duties? We now have a system where nobody is accountable for anything, and to add insult to injury – and this is becoming more obvious – that such persons who were or are not acting correctly in their public lives, are defended by the higher posts.”

Ultimately by raising the bar on accountability before the election, Muscat had sealed Mallia’s fate but his personal ties to the Minister have resulted in procrastinating an inevitable decision.

It was this procrastination, which may have cost Muscat his honeymoon with the electorate even if his final decision was the correct one.

Moreover the personal rapport between the two may make the separation a bitter pill to swallow for the ex Minister, as suggested by Mallia’s refusal to resign despite being asked to do so by his Prime Minister. By provoking Mallia’s ire Muscat may well be playing with fire even if the cost of not sacking him would have been even more devastating.