Marlene fulfilling Muscat’s prophesy
Member of Parliament Marlene Farrugia is providing some spice to the PN leadership campaign by suggesting that the whole process should be abandoned, the four contenders told to stay home and a revamp of the PN statute be made to open the leadership race to anyone who feels suitable to occupy the post.
Farrugia is making such claims on the premise that the role of the Opposition Leader is one that affects the country besides the fact that the incumbent could be leading the nation in five years’ time. Those who are critical of Marlene Farrugia claim that she shouldn’t meddle in the affairs of the PN but concentrate on the work of the PD.
Farrugia disagrees, of course, and conveniently quotes the coalition as a valid reason why she has all the right to intervene. This casts further doubt on the wisdom behind the idea of the preelectoral coalition in the first place. It also gives strength to the prophecy made by Joseph Muscat during the electoral campaign that ForzaNazzjonali was just a ‘coalition of confusion’.
It is clear, from Marlene Farrugia’s comments regarding the PN leadership race, that the coalition came to be without
Editor’s pick
any rules of engagement.
For starters, Marlene Farrugia cannot act as an outsider of the PN when it suits her and ask to be an insider on other occasions. Party members are expected to have faith in the democratic system that elects their leader. If, on the other hand, she feels she should have the liberty to speak like an outsider, than she needs to drop any pretences of changing the PN as though she were an insider.
All four PN leadership hopefuls stood weary of the coalition created by Simon Busuttil and Marlene Farrugia. The four of them said, in different terms, that they still need to identify a working relationship with PD. On his part, Busuttil, who seems to have an opinion on many things, as though he’s not about to leave his role come September, has steered away from commenting on the way his coalition buddy Marlene is treating the PN’s leadership race. Maybe she’s saying what he himself desperately wants to say, yet his actions speak otherwise. When inviting the four contenders to his office for a photo opportunity, Busuttil did not ask Farrugia to come round. A clear message that this is not her business.
Which leaves us to what sort of relationship one would expect the new PN leader to have with the PD in the years to come. Adrian Delia and Chris Said already declared that, come the general election, the PN would run on its own steam. Alex Perici Calascione went as far as claiming that he has a difficulty keeping the coalition running in the next five years should he be made leader of the PN. What the leadership hopefuls failed to utter, as yet, is an offer to the PD to merge with the PN.
This will give Marlene Farrugia the possibility to participate in PN politics, it will grant the PN two seats in Parliament and will dissolve the ‘coalition of confusion’ once and for all, ridding both parties from Joseph Muscat’s rant on the matter, something he will not stop saying until his last days in office in 2020. As bold as it may seem, this option has one very big hurdle: the PN diehards, those who rule supreme at the moment, and those whom the four contenders are trying to lure to get their vote. How will they react to such a proposal? Maybe the only ones who can entertain such a proposal are Farrugia and Busuttil, the biological parents of this coalition.