Speculating around the prerogative

Choosing the Cabinet, as every prime minister is fond of telling us, is the prime minister’s prerogative. And that is how it should be. But that does not mean that we common mortals cannot use our heads and try to delve into the backdrop of some, at least, of a prime minister’s decisions when it comes to choosing the members of a Cabinet.

Take the latest Cabinet formation, announced last week by Prime Minister Muscat, newly re-elected.

It is clear that some Cabinet members were promoted through being confirmed in their previous ministerial post. Chris Cardona, Evarist Bartolo, Edward Scicluna, Owen Bonnici, Chris Fearne and Jose Herrera were all retained in their previous roles while Helena Dalli, while confirmed in her previous role had added to it the role of a European Affairs Minister.

A change was necessitated by Foreign Minister George Vella’s resignation from Parliament. Carmelo Abela was moved from the Home Affairs ministry and in turn Michael Farrugia was moved to Home Affairs, with Michael Falzon moving to the Family and Social Solidarity ministry instead.

So far, so clear, even if it involved a rather

Editor’s pick

elaborate round of musical chairs.

Then there was the Anton Refalo case. As stated at the beginning, the choice (and the removal) of a minister is the prime minister’s prerogative. There is no reason to conclude that Refalo was punished and sacked by the prime minister after four years as Gozo Minister. Although he lost some 400 votes from one election to another, he still remained the most popular Labour candidate on the island.

He was offered another ministry, such as the Agriculture one, but he refused the offer and wanted the Gozo Ministry or nothing else. This snippet of news, relayed by the prime minister himself, would seem to indicate a clash between the two. Was there any relation to the claims that something like a 1,000 jobs had been given out in the days preceding the election, causing widespread disruption to private enterprise which saw its workforce disappear from one day to the next? On the other hand we have the case of Konrad Mizzi, on behalf of whom Muscat defied all local and foreign criticism. Mizzi was removed from the energy portfolio and instead shifted to the tourism one and that hottest of hot potatoes that is Air Malta. Joe Mizzi was thus moved from the Transport portfolio where he had many projects still on the burn, from the Kappara roundabout, to the City Gate project, moving to the energy and water management ministry.

Ian Borg, following his successful stint as EU minister, was moved instead to the Transport portfolio in addition to which he will also have the Infrastructure and Capital Projects ministry, in the prime minister’s own words a super-ministry, seeing he will have to implement the election manifesto commitment to redo all of Malta’s roads over seven years. Rather unnoticed in the announcement was the fact that Prime Minister Muscat took under his care the financial services sector, for which he also appointed a parliamentary secretary Silvio Schembri. Over and above this, we must also remember the perhaps hasty and drastic measure that those candidates still hoping for a win at the casual elections were summarily ruled out of a ministerial role. PM Muscat argued he wants the government to start functioning immediately and it was pointed out that a previous PN government had waited for a casual election and kept a ministerial role open for Austin Gatt.