Prime Minister’s ‘public relations’ undermined Farrugia’s authority

She was eloquent, outspoken, and clear-minded. Labour MP Marlene Farrugia, who “might” not run in the next general elections, affirmed her loyalty to her party but said she will stay around to see that Joseph Muscat’s meritocracy pledge gets delivered to the people, in full.

“To me it’s unacceptable that Malta is divided [politically]... to reach its true potential this country must be united, and Muscat showed himself to be the personification of ‘Malta Taghna Lkoll’. Now that we convinced the public, we must start practicing it, we must deliver what we promised. And it could be the smallest things – like transfers from workplaces – that change people’s lives... these are seeds that can destroy the country.”

Farrugia was careful not to point fingers at Joseph Muscat over his decision not to retain her partner, Labour MP Godfrey Farrugia, as health minister before Farrugia decided to resign from the Cabinet of ministers two weeks ago. But she mounted an honourable defence of Farrugia’s stewardship of the difficult health ministry, and identified the prime minister’s media circle as being partly responsible for undermining him.

“The way the prime minister’s PR behaved itself... gave the impression that John Dalli was being imposed upon Farrugia,” she said of the former PN health minister, John Dalli, appointed as an advisor on Mater Dei Hospital’s management.

“Dalli was invited to give his contribution. But the way he was portrayed by the prime minister’s PR was undermining the minister’s authority. Did Godfrey Farrugia get the same media coverage Dalli did? No. Dalli was an advisor, who ended up ‘overshadowing’ the minister.”

Farrugia said that it was up to Muscat to understand the way his ministers were perceived by the public. “If you project him as someone being undermined, you also damage him inside his own ministry,” she said, saying the media was also eager to stoke this perception. “The media project Dalli as the man running the ministry, that Farrugia was some puppet of his.”

Marlene Farrugia however defended Muscat’s prerogative to change his health minister, saying Farrugia had laid out the foundations for a long-term sustainability inside the health sector that was now up to Konrad Mizzi, the new minister, to take on.

But she also committed herself to seeing Muscat’s claims of having created a ‘movement of people’ under the Malta For All slogan (Malta Taghna Lkoll) coming to fruition.

“I am loyal to this ideal. And when I fear that certain decisions are undermining this ideal, I speak out. We still want change, but is it the change that people want? I won’t accept a cosmetic change.”

She refuted claims that she was embarrassing the government by being critical of such issues as the citizenship scheme, which she said was badly handled from the start. “It could have been managed better from the start... Seeing one’s country becoming the talk of the international media is quite something. I wouldn’t want to see such mistakes taking place again.”

She also said that removal of former TVM broadcaster Norman Vella, whose unpaid leave from a civil service job to join the PBS newsroom was executed at the request for the former administration, was perceived as “an antidote” to the unpopular move at harnessing broadcaster Lou Bondì into a government agency.

“I’m not entering into the merits of whether Norman Vella had to stay on or not. Vella was seen as somebody with little respect for Labour... it gave the impression that Labour was not uniting the country irrespective of politics. It was as if Vella served as an antidote to the unpopular move to give Bondì a government role.”

She said people inside PBS should be broadcasters who give their service according to their competence. “We are Maltese first and foremost, before being Labourites or Nationalists.”

Farrugia, a former Nationalist candidate, said she joined Muscat’s Labour Party after having ditched Alfred Sant’s anti-EU policy, and that she convinced Godfrey Farrugia to join the party.

“Before the election, Muscat told us that only one of us could be minister, and we agreed that it should be Godfrey, especially if he was to be made health minister.

“But Muscat also told me that I could assist Godfrey in running the ministry. I didn’t set out to help him in the first week, but Godrey told me ‘the PM told you to come and assist me, so come...’ – and indeed it was only in the second week that I was present for a press conference, and then stepped down after just two days,” she said.

“The assistance I was asked to give was unpaid... I decided to stand down because the media attention was being turned away from Godfrey’s work. I had no pressure from anyone.”

She also had some words of advice for Opposition leader Simon Busuttil.

“If he does not disassociate himself totally from the past mistakes the PN administration did, and apologises, the PN will never be the party to run this country.”