Managing people

People management is one of the more important skills that any general manager or CEO worth his salt should have. Lawrence Gonzi is the man at the helm of the country. His role is that of Malta’s CEO but in managing people he has failed miserably during his tenure.

As Prime Minister, Gonzi should lead, motivate and inspire. His role should have been to appoint competent persons who could have taken the country forward. Instead, he did the exact opposite. In the case of John Dalli, Gonzi and his strategists managed to remove a valid PN Minister, for some partisan reason, only to replace him with an incompetent Minister.

Gonzi failed to find the right person to manage and run the Justice and Home Affairs Ministry. This was an error of judgement on Gonzi’s part and Dr. Carm Mifsud Bonnici was forced to resign. It was also a mistake by GonziPN to appoint Dr.Mifsud Bonnici as Leader of the House especially when there was a no-confidence motion in him, still pending.

The way that Gonzi has managed the skills of people like Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando, Franco Debono, Louis Deguara and Robert Arrigo is history. One of his duties is to hire and fire as well as use discipline whenever necessary. He has hired Ministers, consultants and people in top positions. But he has not fired anyone although there were some who were ‘kicked upstairs’. He turned criticism from members of his own government into dissent but even in this instance he shifted discipline to his party rather than to his government. He did not exercise discipline in the many cases involving Ministers such as  Austin Gatt on the BWSC and Arriva scandals as well as the recent Car Parks motion, nor did he taken any action in the case of Ministers Tonio Fenech, Joe Cassar, George Pullicino and Dolores Cristina among others.

Gonzi cannot delegate. He holds on to tasks that others should be doing or he dumps onto others what he should be doing. These are both wrong and he should never have assumed the responsibilities of Dr. Carm Mifsud Bonnici when this Minister was forced to resign. He should never have dumped the responsibilities of Enemalta from one Minister to another. Lawrence Gonzi is trying another trick in the Car Parks issue. Austin Gatt dumped the blame onto the whole cabinet and the Gonzi administration has now done a complete u-turn on this issue. The reason is as obvious as the outcome of a no-confidence motion in Minister Austin Gatt.

This is where GonziPN is manipulating people instead of managing people. He has already admitted to having manipulated JPO in the clash with Alfred Sant on the Mistra issue. He might now try to manipulate his way into some form of excuse for Austin Gatt’s resignation to satisfy his obsession of clinging to power. He is manipulating parliamentary procedure to the detriment of the country, in disrespect of the electorate.