Austin Gatt: is the gutsy minister really going to call it a day?

Austin Gatt may be the quintessential Nationalist. Yet his confrontational style, abruptness and laissez faire mindset have set him in class of his own in the PN.

Gatt is definitely not the party’s Mr Nice Guy but his decision not to contest the next election will leave a vacuum in the electoral trenches. His style - which bears a passing resemblance to that of Mintoff, as well as Margaret Thatcher’s  “this lady is not for turning” approach – positively contrasts with the sloppiness of some of his colleagues in the Gonzi Cabinet. .

Having had his political baptism of fire in the 1980s, he still projects himself as a political lion bent on destroying the enemy. He went on record stating that he reads the Kulhadd newspaper on the toilet. Nor was he keen on the niceties of parliamentary democracy.

Speaking in parliament on the transfer of public land to Tecom in June 2006, he amusingly declared he did not see the need to drag the debate on about the transfer of public property to the Dubai company because after all “we, the PN have a majority of five seats. ”Since government has a majority and we have always succeeded in maintaining it, not like when there was a one-seat majority, we are sure that the resolution would pass through parliament”.

Little did Gatt imagine that in a couple of years time his party would be struggling with its own one-seat majority. Addressing the PN’s General Conference in October 2007 he also crossed the ethical line by suggesting that Discovery Channel was planning a documentary about Alfred Sant, for a series about politicians with well-known alcohol and drug abuse problems.

Baptism of fire

Austin Gatt’s astute political character was forged in the late 1970s and 1980s when he was responsible for the Nationalist Party Electoral Office. 

Together with John Dalli and Louis Galea - who earlier this year left Malta after being nominated to  European posts - he represents a  link between party militancy in 80s, the Fenech Adami era, and Gonzi PN.

At just 23 he was entrusted with leading the party’s electoral office. In 1980 he was asked by the party to come up with a strategy against electoral fraud. He also headed the legal Office of the Party, representing the PN in a number of seminal Constitutional cases. 

After the Nationalist Party was elected to Government in 1987, Gatt was elected Secretary General of the Nationalist Party, thus contributing to the greatest landslide in recent political history when his party won by a 13,000 vote margin. 

Yet all this was undone five years later, when an over confident party lost by a 7,000 vote margin. Ironically it was the election which saw Gatt elected for the first time to parliament from the First District, where he garnered 1,917 first count votes - coming third after Guido De Marco and Antoine Mifsud Bonnici. 

Back in opposition Gatt was once again entrusted with a strategic task: that of opening the party’s television station.

But he barely made it to parliament in 1998 when he only obtained 1,374 first count votes from the first district, and a miserable 455 from the tenth district. His damp show this did not stop Eddie Fenech Adami from appointing him first as Parliamentary Secretary in the Office of the Prime Minister, and six months later as Minister for Justice and Local Government.

As Justice Minister he antagonised lawyers and the judiciary in his sweeping reforms that raised court fees to unprecedented levels.

Back in September 2001, his impeachment motion to remove Judge Antonio Depasquale – after the latter just failed to go to work on a point of “principle” for seven whole years, but still received around Lm100,000 in wages – was turned down by the Opposition. A two-thirds majority in Parliament is required to sack a judge.

Gatt was re-elected to Parliament in 2003 with a handsome 3,618 votes, from the First District. He was rewarded by added responsibilities which now included AirMalta plc, Gozo Channel Co. Ltd, Sea Malta Co. Ltd., Maltacom plc, Malta International Airport plc, Enemalta Corporation, Water Services Corporation, Malta Freeport Corporation, Public Broadcasting Services Limited, Malta Drydocks Corporation and Malta Investment Management Co. Ltd.

It was a role in which he found himself reconfirmed by new party leader Lawrence Gonzi, after an acrimonious contest with party veteran John Dalli, in which Gatt remained neutral. Gatt emerged unscathed from the fallout of the clash between Gonzi and Dalli. On the eve of the contest Austin Gatt went as far as nominating both candidates. This confirmed his reputation of being his own man. This made him all the more indispensable for legitimising of Gonzi’s government.

Gatt’s guts

Presiding over public corporations, all with their own politically appointed chairmen, Gatt made it clear that everyone could be expendable. The public broadcaster saw three different chairmen in the space of two years. In his bid to restructure PBS, he treated the public broadcaster as a company that had to be trimmed to the bone, with its broadcaster’s mission statement coming only as an afterthought.

He showed no qualms in selling Sea Malta and picking a potentially bruising fight with former Sea Malta chairman Marlene Mizzi, who years later ended up giving a business friendly face to the Labour party.  But it was the General Workers Union which emerged as the ultimate casualty of Gatt’s brinkmanship.

The message was clear: if the Sea Malta seamen refused Grimaldi’s terms, they would have denied their land-based colleagues a guaranteed employment with Grimaldi or – even better – a cosy job with some government entity. In so doing Gatt had sowed the seeds of discord between the shore based office workers and Sea Malta’s seamen.

Tony Zarb was effectively sandwiched between the conflicting interests of shore – and land-based workers. By guaranteeing the jobs of shore-based workers the government had effectively divided Sea Malta workers.

Gatt’s triumph at Sea Malta paved the way for the privatisation of the port and the Dockyard which ultimately stripped the union of its power to bring the country to a standstill through its control of the ports.

Gatt also quashed any criticism directed against the Smart City project. Opposition leader Alfred Sant was also repeatedly accused of putting spokes in the wheel, when he questioned the real estate component of the project. Reacting, the ministry condemned Sant for “consistently opposing the country’s technological development through a campaign aimed at sabotaging the greatest foreign investment in Malta’s history.”

Yet Gatt’s empire also created a nebulous space between private enterprise and government, with Claudio Grech, who negotiated the agreement between Malta and Smart City, becoming Smart City’s first chief executive.

Despite having his name associated with the unpopular surcharge and being sidelined together with the rest of the cabinet during the electoral campaign, Gatt was still able to garner 3,232 votes in the 2008 election. He was rewarded with a super-ministry which contained responsibility for IT, the Water Services Corporation and Enemalta, Malta Shipyards, transport and roads.

The strike-breaker

Austin Gatt’s star glowed in July 2008 just a few months after the 2008 election when for a whole week he took the limelight by standing firm against the various transport lobbies. It was his finest ‘Thatcher moment’ – a putched battle with all the ingredients of a surreal novel: corpses accumulating at the morgue, hearse owners protesting out on the streets in the unlikely company of bellowing yellow buses and red minibuses, and  soldiers being stopped and robbed of the keys to their trucks by an angry mob, as the battle raged even on the doorstep of Castille.

But it was Gatt who stood up to the arrogant lobby, facing journalists daily in sharp press conferences, keeping his head held high and quipping amusing declarations at the toughest times of crisis while manoeuvring what was a veritable funeral for the hearse owners’ monopoly and the drivers’ clout.

And once again it was his divide-and-rule tactics which won the day. By offering €60,000 to the hearses association to be distributed among its 10 members so that they could ‘restructure’ their operations, he managed to undercut the other unions with his cash offer and the whole lobby fell down like a deck of cards, and the strike was instantly called off.

In the space of a week, Austin Gatt effectively managed to dig the mass grave of the protected transport sectors – from hearses to minibuses, from taxis to buses.

As declared by Gatt himself on the last day of the strike, at the press conference in which the prime minister suddenly appeared out of nowhere, hearses, taxi and minibus drivers ended up inadvertently speeding up the liberalisation process.

“I had no particular rush to liberalise taxis and minibuses,”

In the same way Gatt used cash to destabilise the show of force by the public transport union, so too did the government manage to undercut the General Workers’ Union, by offering dockyard workers the kind of golden handshake they could not refuse.

For once Gatt seemed to be riding high in popularity.  But it was not to last, for the Super Ministry with which Gonzi had entrusted him also included the poisoned chalice of Enemalta.

No subsidies

Austin Gatt’s doctrine couldn’t be simpler: it is not the government’s business to subsidise almost anything, especially the bill for our consumption of electricity and water, which became one of the most defining moments of Gonzi second term in office.

When things couldn’t have been any more swell for the world, as the subprime housing crash in the USA brought down the entire palace of bankers and stockbrokers, out comes Gatt with a €55 million hole in Enemalta’s coffers.

“The money has to come from somewhere. If we do not pay for this shortfall from raising tariffs, we will have no choice but to increase taxes. This idea that government’s money is not the people’s money is false,” Gatt declared, in what became the start of another tussle, this time with practically every union in the country.

For a brief moment in time, the unions presented a united front against the proposed tariffs. But the pettiness between the main unions soon ripped them apart once again, divided over whether to accept government’s final proposals or not. In the end, Gatt managed to secure the cost-recovery plan to pass on the full cost of energy to consumers.

“I cannot understand why nobody is agreeing with me on this,” he said in October. “I am not saying that there won’t be a shock. Of course there will be a shock but we have no choice but to recover this money.”

Clipping Austin’s wings

The decision to shift Enemalta and the Water Services Corporation away from Austin Gatt to finance minister Tonio Fenech was Gonzi’s most significant move in the February 2010 reshuffle.

Here the PM addressed popular discontent at Gatt’s brusque handling of the tariffs hike, largely the cause of the alienation of the social partners.

It also reflected Gatt’s declining popularity: a MaltaToday survey in November 2009 found his performance had been rated negatively by 49%, up from 33% back in March 2009. His performance was only deemed positive by 19%.

Gonzi justified his choice arguing that Fenech was the one talking to the tourism and manufacturing industries about the energy hikes.

At the time of the reshuffle Gatt was also facing controversy over the Delimara power station contract, which was under investigation by the Auditor-General. Gatt’s demotion pre-empted many calls for his resignation.

Yet Gatt refused to disappear from the picture, objecting to the opposition’s request to have witnesses to the Delimara case summoned before parliament’s Public Accounts Committee.

He was always there when the party needed a bad guy to take the opposition’s punches.

But Gatt could now dedicate himself to delivering a decent public transport system - a task which has eluded all post-war Maltese governments.

Describing the final package with private company Arriva as a “very good deal”, Gatt explained how the new blue and white buses (Arriva’s corporate colours) will herald a change in how the Maltese people perceive the public transport system.

And in line with his ideology, the government will be saving €35 million in subsidies with the shortfall being made up by higher fees for tourists.

Persistent rumours

Rumours about Gatt’s decision not to contest the next election have been spreading for the past two years.  In an interviewed by MaltaToday in July 2008 he was asked directly on the persistent rumours that he is spreading the word that he won’t contest the election again. He replied by asking;

“Don’t we have enough rumours already?

Is it true you said so, interviewer Karl Schembri asked..

“Probably while I was at the counting hall. You know, after all that hassle, that’s what I always say.”

Do you mean it? “I probably said it, but who knows what I’ll be doing in five years’ time?”

Reason I ask is: You already have an image of being the government’s cowboy. If you won’t stand up for a vote again you’re bound to turn into a full western movie by the end of the legislature.

“What are you coming up with? I honestly planned a very calm summer, and it has been disrupted. Were it not for this strike I would be sunbathing in Marsalforn. They ruined my holiday! At least now I can go for the weekend. So leave me alone…”

It was only on Sunday that Gatt confirmed the veracity of these rumours by declaring his intention that it is time for him to move on, a dramatic statement from a political animal like Gatt.