Minister Mallia will in all probability not resign. He went on record during the “secret” negotiations regarding the IIP scheme that should a residency requirement be included then he would resign from his ministerial position. We are not supposed to know about it because the negotiations were secret but that secrecy, like virginity, cannot be regained so “Tant pis, monsieur ministre”.
Jason Azzopardi and Karol Aquilina both attest to Mallia’s promise. It would be their word against his, only Karol Aquilina is apparently in the habit of taking meticulous minutes (not like Mintoff’s Cabinet) and neither Owen Bonnici nor the directly interested person have denied Mallia’s promise to resign. Labour of course are trying to make a mountain out of the broken promise of secrecy – during their weekend conference they said that only a child “goes to tell mummy what daddy told him”. Which does beg the question about the kind of families Labour has in mind… but I digress.
The point is that the promise was made during negotiations. Negotiations are built on trust. You trust that the person before you means what he says and would back it up with the necessary action. There would be no point in negotiating if this element of trust went missing. If you do not deliver on what was agreed in negotiations – no matter how secretive they may have been – then you lose your trust rating. You become incredible. The wrong sort of incredible.
Much is being made of the fact that “lawyers are literal minded” and that they believe in “the rule of the law”. The focus though should not be on lawyers but on the diplomacy of politics – whatever the politician’s profession may be (and lets not forget that we now have former disc jockeys in diplomatic circles). Diplomacy is all about negotiation. You can be skillful through conviction or you can be successful through bartering and trade. In all cases you are expected to deliver on your word. Your word counts.
When the EU Commission was sold the idea of the IIP it was immediately clear that it had been given a particular idea of what the revised IIP would consist of. The wording of the first Commission position following the historic agreement included strong words such as “effective residency”. We still do not know whether the revised scheme itself, once made public, will be such as to conform to what the Commission was made to expect in those particular negotiations. Will Joseph Muscat and his Henley & Co. sidekicks (or is it vice-versa?) be true to the words they delivered in Brussels?
Back to Mallia. His position is rather untenable. He may cry foul about the fact that his promise behind the curtains of secrecy was suddenly made public. It does not change the tenor of what is actually happening with regard to the value of his word. Mallia’s position at any table of negotiation is now worthless. His reputation (and in Malta reputation is a big word that covers bloated marketing exercise of the “thick with experienced lawyers” kind) as a convincing criminal lawyer will no longer serve to cover the fact that his word is not worth anything. The opposition will rightly not be able to sit at any negotiating table that includes someone who fails to be true to his word.
When in opposition the Labour party would rant and rave about how the Nationalist Ministers would not resign whenever Labour deemed that it was time for them to go. In this case we have a Labour Minister who himself gave his word that should something happen he would resign. That something has happened. Or at least Joseph Muscat promised the Commission that it will happen. How valuable is the word of a politician? We’ll soon know.
In the beginning there was the word, now all we are left with are politicians.
In un paese pieno di coglioni ci mancano le palle. (reprise)
