Labour today presented a motion calling for the resignation of Richard Cachia Caruana because he "colluded" with the US ambassador in Brussels to "find ways to re-activate Malta's participation in the Partnership for Peace programme".
Let's not get into the merits of whether Malta should or should not participate in the PfP programme (maybe I'll do that in another post). In any case, this is now no longer an issue given Labour's declared change-in-position (let's not call it U-turn) on the subject, confirmed by Joseph Muscat and the same George Vella who today presented the motion, in a meeting with US ambassador Douglas Kmiec in November 2009: "PfP membership was not contrary to the neutrality clause of Malta’s Constitution" and the Labour Party would have been willing to work with government to rejoin.
The point under discussion here is whether what RCC did was legitimate, or whether it "by-passed Parliament". Fellow blogger J'accuse wrote an excellent post on the subject. This was a Cabinet decision just as much as Sant's de-activation of our participation in the PfP was. And the PN, which was against this de-activation on that day, never changed its position on the subject.
Since RCC is a civil servant: the Maltese government's Ambassador to the EU, I would have assumed it was his job to find a way forward for Malta to have its participation in the PfP programme re-activated, in line with the government's position.
Not so for Labour. It seems that for them, doing his duty still merits his resignation. Because horror of horrors, their IT elves have came upon a Wikileak which shows how he proposed to the US ambassador and the Maltese government to declare that Malta's 1994 PfP agreements remain into force, and that the country's withdrawal from active participation in 1996 was not a complete withdrawal.
Well, what this Wikileak tells me is that this man is very damn good at his job. In fact, government did take this approach, it did not need to negotiate (and ratify) a new security agreement with NATO from scratch, and thus did not need to return to Parliament to request approval of a (new) subscription to the PfP Framework Document. Thus, Malta could once again participate in EU-NATO strategic discussions, which proved useful during the Libya crisis. The cable doesn't even tackle the re-activation of the PfP itself, but about how Malta could participate in these discussions without being an active PfP participant (something which came four years later). Actually, what this Wikileak reveals is the diplomatic frustration which had been caused by Labour's de-activation from the PfP in 1996.
It thus seems that Joseph Muscat and the Labour Party were not the only ones willing to work with government to rejoin the PfP: the government's civil servants were not only willing, but were working actively on it.
But it's now painstakingly obvious that Labour's plan for these past months didn't go past the "use-Franco" strategy:
- Franco Debono criticizes Austin Gatt - Labour present a motion calling for Gatt's resignation
- Franco Debono criticizes Carm Mifsud Bonnici - Labour present a motion calling for Mifsud Bonnici's resignation
- Franco Debono criticizes Richard Cachia Caruana - Labour present a motion calling for Cachia Caruana's resignation
Given the sequence of events, I would not be surprised if Labour's next motion calls for Galea Curmi's resignation.
The full text of the Wikileak cable can be found here.
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