More Lessons in Irrelevance

So he resigned. Not much to be surprised about there. It’s a miracle that the cohabitation had survived so long into the legislature but then again he has had his moments and the government has had to survive more than its fair share of confidence votes thanks to the likes of the newly resigned MP and his colleague Franco Debono. We now know for a fact that the PN election team were conned by the tantrum throwing dentist – and whether by force majeure for want of anything better they set about ghost writing articles and driving home the idea of JPO the victim until a day after the election.

Once the election was over they had a time bomb ticking in the house. Four years ago it was only the inner circle of campaign directors, executive members and spin consultants that knew of the big con. Then slowly JPO uncovered his cars. The more he went maverick the more it was clear that not all was united in the PN house. The divorce bill last year was one of the final straws so to speak. All the while their mouths stayed mum. The ticking bomb was left to tick. They could not do otherwise – the slim majority precluded them from kicking out the man who had garnered over 5,000 number one votes thanks to their hardy work. Damn.

Nobody spoke of government by coalition then even though it was always clear that the band of representatives flying the PN banner was anything but a unified party supporting the same ideas. Again, just look at the divorce vote and see what I mean. This was no coalition in fact. It was uncomfortable cohabitation. The couple was in trouble big time and domestic disagreements could only be kept quiet in order to give the outside impression of a united facade.

Coalitions arise after elections when two or more parties need to combine the number of seats they have in order to enjoy a majority in the house. Before they agree on a coalition they take a long hard look at their electoral programmes and see how much of each one will survive into the coalition. Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando is not in a coalition with the Nationalist Party. In his resignation letter he stresses that he will continue to work with the Nationalist party in order to implement the electoral programme. That would not make it a coalition. Worse still, JPO has already – repeatedly – operated outside the nationalist party’s electoral programme.

From the moment he conned the party’s intelligentia with his Mistra move to this day he has blatantly operated against the interests of the party he supposedly represented in parliament. That is not a coalition. That is a renegade, a rebel, a splinter – call it what you like but don’t call it a coalition.

Comparing the uncomfortable cohabitation between Gonzi’s PN and Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando to a coalition is either a petty example of political spin or a manifestation of crass political ignorance.

The comparison to a coalition is irrelevant.