Finance Minister Clyde Caruana is in deep conflict with Prime Minister Robert Abela right now and this explains why as of recently, stories came out in the press which tried to defame Clyde Caruana. This is a very common occurrence in Labour internal politics recently, with Robert Abela and Joseph Muscat using their acolytes and associates to leak stories to the press against their rivals and critics. Joseph Muscat is leaking and even producing fake stories to the press with the help of Keith Schembri and Charlon Gouder while Robert Abela is being helped by Ramona Attard. Both Joseph Muscat and Robert Abela are trying to leak stories against each other and Ramona Attard is in the strange position of having helped both of them but is now realigning more in favour of Robert Abela, while Keith Schembri is becoming more active.
Much of the conflict between Clyde Caruana and Robert Abela seems to be Robert Abela’s fault as Clyde Caruana is becoming increasingly frustrated with his failure to mitigate the total wreckage in public finances caused by Robert Abela’s stupidity. One of the major bones of contention is AirMalta which is losing tens of millions of Euros every year. Clyde Caruana wants to close AirMalta and create another national airline, but Robert Abela is delaying this decision, and while this decision is delayed millions of Euros are being lost, and the damage increasing. AirMalta’s executive chairman David Curmi is closer to the Prime Minister than he is to Clyde Caruana so Clyde is becoming powerless with regards to AirMalta. Robert Abela is exacerbating the damage with even more stupid decisions such as, for example, the transfer of AirMalta’s jet-fuel debt to Enemalta – a somewhat irregular and possibly even illegal procedure of cooking the books. And the problem is that these kinds of creative life-saving methods would have to continue at the expense of public finances until AirMalta is closed down.
Clyde Caruana has become a serious problem for Robert Abela. Having been propped up by the Labour Party as the “intelligent technocrat”, it’s rather difficult to take that back from him in a PR way. Publishing information about his villa would not sway the electorate’s opinion about him and there is a high probability he is going to be easily elected again in the next election. He got elected with 4115 votes in the last election in the Second District alone and with minimal campaigning. Removing him from Minister of Finances would send the wrong message to the electorate so instead, Clyde Caruana is being left powerless as much as possible by the Prime Minister.
spot on!
One of the reasons that led to the downfall of the nationalst party is that it has always been dominated and run by lawyers and notaries. The Labour party has followed suit and is now dominated by lawyers supported by a few juvenile malleable technocrats. The likes of RA, RF and others of their profession are running Labour into a brick wall.