How the prime minister backed himself into a corner

Prime minister Robert Abela seems to have a chronic inability to read the room.

As a direct result of the government’s efforts to ram through two planning bills which have proven to be extremely unpopular even within his own party, the prime minister has set himself up for yet another stand off with a powerful coalition of environmental NGOs.

While Budget Day is usually a PR bonanza for any government seeking to shore up its credibility as a solid steward of the economy, Abela’s steamroller approach fueled opposition to proposed legislative changes which would effectively give carte blanche to rogue developers who have grown used to exploiting a broken planning system.

All the PR set-pieces that were prepared for today’s itinerary will hardly matter with a sizeable, loud crowd on Parliament’s doorstep, demanding to be heard and for the bills to be scrapped entirely.

After failing to seriously take heed of the overwhelming opposition towards these bills, the prime minister does not have any good options left.

Revoking the planning bills would weaken the government’s standing with bullish developers who have made millions from rampant speculative buying, jeopardising the Labour Party’s soon-to-be-used electoral war chest.

A half-baked compromise which excludes the more contentious elements of the planning bills in favour of keeping others intact would not satisfy anyone, either. Civil society and the developers’ lobby alike would both be able to argue that they’ve been shortchanged.

The biggest threat Abela faces lies in pushing the bills through no matter what – though it would certainly grant him immense standing within the narrow circle of developers who stand to benefit from these changes, the reality is that his party as a whole has little appetite for this fight.

While the prime minister’s seat certainly grants Abela enormous power and influence in the government’s hierarchy, no prime minister is invulnerable to the perils of being isolated from his party’s rank and file.

Now that this standoff has escalated to yet another massive outpour of anger from civil society and the members of the general public who support it, the prime minister will be at great pains to justify any decision he ends up taking, even if he revokes the planning bills which lit the fuse in the first place.

Abela’s uncomfortable positioning ahead of today’s protest in front of Parliament also serves as further proof of the prime minister’s chronic blindness to public sentiment, which has become a defining feature of his tenure.

The more memorable examples of Abela’s U-turns throughout five years of being in the prime minister’s seat are very revealing.

One recent example is the ongoing saga between Binance and the Malta Community Chest Fund, which falls under the auspices of the office of the President of Malta.

While corruption remains among the top concerns flagged by respondents in electoral surveys, Abela glibly spoke about doing whatever he can to secure a $39 million donation from Binance, casting himself as a pragmatic scavenger of refused goods as opposed to the president’s steadfast refusal.

Rather than taking a rare opportunity for the government to give the impression it is serious about enforcement in the financial sector, Abela seems to be going out of his way to welcome Binance with open arms, in spite of the company’s dubious history as a financial operator.

Abela’s waffling about Manoel island now leaves Gżira’s only green lung subject to the throes of secretive negotiation proceedings with no end in sight.

After threatening the opposition with an early snap election if it changes its leader, Abela seems to have gotten cold feet – all after he had categorically dismissed the possibility of calling a snap election in January in the first place.

Most tellingly of all, tiny, tentative steps taken by Abela in the beginning of his premiership to distance himself from his disgraced predecessor Joseph Muscat seem to have all but been abandoned, with the prime minister cutting off Muscat’s acolyte Neville Gafa’ from his position as person of trust a few months after appointing him only after the latter set off on an anti-LGBT+ tirade.