Resigned to reason

The “Christmas Truce” has gone up in ashes with a Ho! Ho! Ho! and without so much as a by your leave. It was obvious from the start (as we had predicted) that the two parties would be unable to contain the inertia of the electoral swing. The 9th of March has a gravitational pull of its own that knows no truces and acknowledges no pauses. Even before the big Anglu Farrugia bomb had fallen into the atmosphere like a big party pooper, the two parties were still heavily active on the promotional front but nothing really changes there.

Anglu’s resignation promises to be much more than a blip on the “truce” agenda. Labour have been forced to hold an extraordinary council meeting between Christmas and New Year. No time to unwrap the presents and no time for Luciano to regale us with the latest news from under the Christmas tree at Casa Busuttil (Labour). Instead Labour will be cooped up voting for their new Deputy Leader for Parliamentary Affairs. Which is quite a bitch really. In the first instance, Parliament is all but wrapped up now and Labour could have provided an interim leader without having to go through the pains of an expedited deputy leadership campaign. The post itself – as was the case with the PN – is not an issue really. Labour’s deputies have been useless props all along – causing more harm than damage (and you cannot say we didn’t tell you so before this happened) – so this is nothing to do with the post per se.

So what IS happening? Why has Labour so evidently gone for this step? Let us see what we can read in them while the facts are still fresh:

1) The Truce

The run up to the truce was an all round victory to the nationalists. Poll gaps were softened and thanks to the shenanigans of Anglu Farrugia (and the complicity of TVM) , the last memory before Christmas would definitely be the bumbling deputy’s antics on Xarabank. Not good, Labour would say. What Labour needed was not a truce but a “casus belli” – an excuse to reset its train on tracks. Ironically Anglu’s perceived moment of triumph over Simon – the very appeal case of which Simon was absolutely ignorant – turned out to be his cup of hemlock. Comments made by Anglu later in the week would become the excuse for Labour to dump excess baggage and to keep the momentum going. Forget Santa… this Christmas the people will have “a new deputy leader”. It was a bit like wishing for an electric car racing track and getting a woolly jumper instead. (Ghax dak ghandek bzonn).

2) The Resignation

I’m quite sure that whoever is supposed to be planning Labour’s campaign must be believing that they have carried out the smartest of moves. In one fell swoop Labour rids itself of an inconvenient bungler, keeps the electoral momentum going and has paved the way for the election of a deputy leader who is capable of returning the swings from that supposed Goliath called Simon. Wrong. We do not need to wait for the election of the new deputy to find out why. First of all Labour has shown once again that it is reactive and never proactive. They allow the Nationalist Party to dictate the rules of the game once the election is in full swing. No matter how much Joseph twists and turns about a “culture of resignation” he will never sell it through. The real reason is that Labour needed a replacement and they needed it fast. In falling for this trap they have allowed the discussion to shift into the barren (and relatively irrelevant) land of Deputy Leaderships. Again J’accuse asks: Since when do Deputy Leaders or Vici Kapi run the country?

3) The Culture of Resignation

Yes. Labour do have a point to win here, albeit a very minor one. Nobody is kidding anyone – this was not an automatic resignation by Anglu Farrugia. He was asked to resign and as we have seen from his reaction and letter, he was not exactly pleased with the result and showed so clearly. He DID resign though – which is the point I mentioned earlier. Muscat still CAN move his people around with relative ease something that Lawrence Gonzi plainly could not do throughout this legislature. It’s a damp victory of course since I am quite sure that the mechanics of this system depends very much on whether you are in government or still desperately aspiring to get there. Farrugia was not in the same position as a Pullicino Orlando or a Debono to mention the obvious two.

It is also about a culture and approach to resignations. I still cannot understand Labour’s fully. On the one hand they are rather cynical and are prepared to break up Christmas in order to realign their electoral plans. On the other hand this resignation turns out to be weakened and diluted by Joseph Muscat’s offer to Farrugia that “the door is still open” for him. How exactly Joseph? What does that mean to us idiots who still believe that a party candidate is accepted when it is clear that his opinions and ideas conform with that of the party ticket? It’s the “anything goes” mentality really – and it also goes to show why the resignation was more about replacing Anglu than about removing him.

4) Teamwork

A small word about teamwork. Joseph got to kick out Anglu without too much squealing and protesting. Labour is taking a risk (whether it is calculated though is another thing) here. An internal election in this period is either going to be a doctored affair – with the anointed one already chosen and pushed – which will make it look fake. It could also be an acrimonious affair that exposes certain faults in the party. The PN media have already started pushing on the weak link of Jason Micallef (as though electoral district rivalries were non existent in the PN camp). Joseph Muscat has been forced to declaim one of his usual tautologies: after a break from promising the eradication of poverty (St. Francis will not be proud) he came back with the assertion that “anything that the PN says is a lie”. If I were the PN Communications office I would issue a quick festive press release in the light of this statement: “Joseph Muscat ragel tal-ostra“.

5) The Nationalists

They’ve definitely been thrown by this sudden earthquake. They might smile while gritting their teeth at any mention of the culture of resignation that so plagued them during the last legislature but that will be a small price to pay. What they have to hope is that the new deputy leader from Labour HQ is not a clone of Simon – which he can very well be. Bar the fact that such a deputy will inevitably have militated against membership of the European Union (or protested mildly) we can expect another person with experience in the EU – an MEP. They’d be surprised at how fast the Labour supporters and the ditherers might warm up to a Louis Grech or Edward Scicluna di turno. Simon’s call until now has been “to bring something new” to Maltese politics since he always worked in Brussels (although he DID write the last electoral manifesto for the PN). Well, Labour might just be about to clone Gonzi’s new toy and in the local world of zero sum assessments it might not be too long before the “Simon move”  will have been replicated.

So the nationalists are right about the Simon effect. Anglu Farrugia did end up resigning after that ill-fated debate on Xarabank. It was not because of any kind of outstanding performance by Simon though. This was a delayed reaction by Labour who has realised very late in the day how badly one of its deputy leaders was effecting its points at the polls. The truth is that Anglu should never have been on the team – or at least he should have been hidden smartly in the same manner the PN hides its more embarrassing (but vote promising) candidates.

Conclusions

There’s much more to be read and seen in this but these are the first impressions. The main certainty we have is that this Christmas will be tinged in red with a couple of PN sideshots every now and then just to keep us in the spirit. The early impression I get is that Labour was pushed to immediate action because of the results that it was seeing the polls – which can only mean that the great divide is no longer so great. It also means that the next campaign promises to be much much more than a simple walkover.