POLITICALLY GOBSMACKED

There have only been a few occasions in my life when I have been Gobsmacked and I have just experience another rare occurrence.

The Gibraltar Government has just announced that Clive Golt is its new media director replacing the late lamented Francis Cantos.

Certainly Mr Golt, a one-time stalwart of the GBC and more latterly the editor of the GSLP-leaning New People, has all the credentials for the job and more.

He resigned from his GBC post to stand as a GSLP candidate in the 1996 elections. Sadly for him the GSLP lost power, he wasn’t elected to the then House of Assembly, and has spent the years since out in the cold.

Perhaps cold is an understatement as the relationship between Mr Golt and the Chief Minister, Peter Caruana, his new employer, was at best frigid. Numerous rows and unpleasant accusations went to and fro between the two in public. I bite my tongue!

Now Caruana says he has never doubted Golt’s “personal integrity” – whoops there goes another political pig flying overhead.

Still Mr Golt is now a civil servant and should the GSD lose power next year as the opinion polls predict, he will still be in the job serving the new GSLP government.

Which is where he wanted to be in the first place.

A smart move therefore by Mr Golt but Mr Caruana has left me Gobsmacked!

THE HASSAN LEGACY

As regular readers of my blog will know I am partial to chewing the cud so when I visit Gibraltar I like to have a coffee and munch on the political fat of the Rock’s politics. Hence I sometimes call in for a chat with Fabian Picardo who, apart from being an emerging big beast with the opposition GSLP, is also a leading lawyer with Hassans.

Back in April I called in to the Hassans offices to see Fabian and instead of being shown to one of the small meeting rooms to the right of reception I found myself directed to a large room on the left. I was rather taken back as it seemed not a meeting room but more likely the partners’ boardroom.

As I waited for Fabian to join me I notice that on the wall at the head of the table was an old photograph, probably of a very young Sir Joshua Hassan. Fabian later confirmed this was so, and if I remember rightly – which I am prone not to do – it was taken around the time that the then Joshua Hassan became a lawyer. As he was called to the bar in 1939 it must be 70 years old.

Now with most portraits they look at you head on. However Sir Joshua’s head is slightly turned to the right so it appears that he is listening in to your conversation. It might have been the effects of the strong black coffee but I would have waged he was trying to catch our words of wisdom on the Rock’s politics of the day. Indeed I am sure he was.

The name Hassans is today international recognised both in the legal profession and the business world as being one of the most respected chambers around. Whilst Sir Joshua was an eminent lawyer and a QC he was also twice chief minister of Gibraltar’s then administrations. His political success was founded on his work as leader of the Association for the Advancement of Civil Rights (AACR) – a civil rights movement that fought for the self determination of the Gibraltar people and the establishment of many of its present political institutions.

So it is perhaps fitting that within the ranks of Hassans legal beagles are individuals who are making their mark on the political life of the Rock. When the GSLP leader, Joe Bossano, finally leaves the stage Fabian Picardo could well take his place. However a few offices down the corridor sits Gilbert Licudi who is probably his chief rival for the post. So come the next general election on the Rock it is a possibility that either Picardo or Licudi could emerge as chief minister – with certainly one or the other holding a key ministry in that government.

Not far away is Peter Montegriffo who in the first GSD administration of chief minister, Peter Caruana, was deputy leader of the party and minister for trade and industry from 1996 to 2000. He did not seek re-election but it would take a braver man than me to suggest that his political career is over; indeed I suspect the opposite is the truth, so maybe he too will still be chief minister.

Feetham is also a well known name in Gibraltar politics – Michael Feetham having being a founder member of the GSLP in 1979 and minister in one of Joe Bossano’s administrations. At Hassans you’ll find Nigel Feetham, brother to Daniel who is currently a GSD minister. Now Nigel was a member of the GSLP with Daniel and when he walked out to form the Labour Party Nigel followed in his wake and played a major part in that short-lived party. I always had a suspicion that Nigel might be the dark horse in Gibraltar politics and although he now is seemingly lying doggo who knows he may yet emerge to eclipse his brother. By-the-by before Daniel was elected an MP at the last election and became fittingly minister for justice he too plied his trade at Hassans.

There may be others in the ranks of Hassans’ lawyers who have political ambitions and no doubt others will join in the coming years. However I think it is fascinating that the legacy of Sir Joshua lives on at Hassans both in the legal world but also in the political arena.

Of course “political” chambers are not unknown in the UK but they tend to be aligned to a certain party. Today AACR might beat on in the hearts and even have a place in the souls of the older generation of Llanitos but the party itself does not. I believe at heart Sir Joshua was a socialist but the lawyers in Hassans ranks, who are intent on political careers, seemingly represent a far broader spectrum of beliefs thus ensuring the Hassan legacy is firmly intact.

CARUANA AT THE UN

The chief minister of Gibraltar, Peter Caruana, last week appeared yet again before the UN’s Fourth Committee that deals with decolonisation. Also in New York was the former chief minister and leader of the GSLP, Joe Bossano, who insists on making his own presentation.

This of course always annoys Caruana beyond belief and for once I share his ire because I take the view that if a Rock with 30,000 residents cannot speak with one voice before the UN on such a key issue then its very argument is damaged.

When the President of the USA speaks at the UN he does so for all the American people. Likewise so do the presidents and prime ministers of the European countries for their peoples - so why should Gibraltar be different? After all the chief minister is the duly elected leader of the Rock’s government.

Mind you there is a precedent for Gibraltar sending politicians of different political views to address the UN. Back in 1964 Sir Joshua Hassan was the chief minister of Gibraltar’s legislature and leader of the AACR. He went to New York to address the Committee of 24 (which is also dedicated to decolonisation) along with the independent leader of the Opposition, P J Isola. However in that instance the two eminent lawyers were singing from the same hymn sheet and both returned home to a tumultuous welcome in John MacKintosh Square – a scenario hard to imagine Caruana and Bossano sharing.

Interestingly I understand the delegation told the UN that whereas Gibraltar was indisputably a Crown Colony of Great Britain, it was one in which the evils of colonisation no longer existed, and one which was on the verge of achieving self-government. This would strike me as being the same message that subsequent chief ministers carried to the UN over the next 25 years!

I bring you some of the key parts of the Chief Minister’s speech that refer to the Treaty of Utrecht and how this long abandoned document colours both Spain’s relations with the Rock but also the UN’s own treatment of Gibraltar to this day.

Chief Minister Peter Caruana:

“Spain says that a Treaty of 1713 that is now defunct and ignored in every other respect, has been condemned to the dustbin of early 18th century history and violates the principles of the Charter, nevertheless has the effect in the 21st century that the people of my small country, Gibraltar, uniquely, do not enjoy the right to self determination. Put another way: Spain asserts that the political future of my country and its people should be negotiated, decided and imposed upon it by others.

“Pursuant to this remarkable position for this day and age, Spain asserts that our decolonisation can only be brought about by means of the transfer of our Sovereignty by the United Kingdom (who you still list as our so called administering power) to Spain, over our heads, contrary to and regardless of our wishes, and negotiated bilaterally between them. All as if we had no rights and our wishes counted for nothing.

“Spain further claims to associate you all with this anachronistic approach by alleging that the doctrine of the UN reflected in General Assembly Resolutions of the 1960s requires this to be so.

“We in Gibraltar do not agree with this. We will never do so. Nor am I aware of a single reputable international lawyer who is capable of objectivity in the issue of Gibraltar, who believes that the Spanish position is sustainable in international law, including the very UN doctrine that Spain tries to invoke. Little wonder then that our suggestion that the matter be referred to the International Court of Justice for an advisory opinion is not accepted by Spain.

“As members of the free, democratic world, and subscribers to modern principles of human and political rights, we in Gibraltar believe that the political future of Gibraltar can only be decided or determined by us in accordance with our freely expressed wishes. The contrary view, that our future must be decided by others and imposed on us against our will, is not compatible or consistent with basic principles and values of democracy and human (including political) rights.

“At the heart of the contrary view lies one fatal misconception of principle and one distortion of fact propagated with a view to invoking an inapplicable principle. The misconception of principle is the failure to understand that the Sovereignty of Gibraltar is neither the United Kingdom’s to give away, nor Spain’s to demand by reference to a wholly unrealistic and unviable desire to return the map of the world to what is was 305 years ago, ignoring subsequent democratic, human rights and international legal principles! It is as if Spain thinks that mankind has stood still during the last 305 years, for her benefit in the matter of Gibraltar.

“The distortion of fact (to attempt to apply the UN Charter principle of territorial integrity to the case of Gibraltar) is to ignore the fact that Gibraltar is not part of Spain, and therefore our decolonisation by self determination could not and does not disintegrate Spain’s territorial integrity, rendering that particular principle entirely inapplicable to our case.

“No competent international lawyer concerned to uphold their reputation will argue that it is possible under the UN Charter to decolonise a listed Non Self Governing Territory other than by the application of the principle of self determination. And no democrat should be willing to argue that either.

“Mr Chairman, since the Special Committee on Decolonisation has taken to
fabricating extraordinary rules which are unsustainable in international law and UN Doctrine, such as the suspension of self determination principles to territories affected by a sovereignty dispute (of course, under pressure from states that are sovereignty claimants!), we have been forced to bypass the Special Committee and secure our decolonisation by other means.

“In doing so we have relied on General Assembly Resolution 2625 of 24 October1970, in which a fourth decolonisation method is recognised as acceptable, namely, “any status suitable to its circumstances that is freely determined by the people of a territory in an act of self determination”.

“Mr Chairman, nobody who visits Gibraltar and observes its society and self government can objectively think that Gibraltar, in reality, remains a colony. The decolonisation of Gibraltar is no longer a pending issue. It has already happened in practice and in law by virtue of our new Constitution.”

CARUANA THE CENSOR

You have to be thick skinned to be a politician and unsavoury attacks come with the turf. However the accusation that Gibraltar’s Chief Minister, Peter Caruana, had exercised censorship came not from a local political rival or hack but a respected TV journalist and was aired on Channel 4 TV in the UK.

The man making the accusation was Channel Four’s Kwame Kwei-Armah who accuses Caruana of attempting to “exercise censorship in the programming” of “On Tour with the Queen”. The last of the four episodes were broadcast on Monday night and the programme retraces the steps of Queen Elizabeth’s 1953 Commonwealth Tour.

This episode dealt with the Queen’s visits to Libya, Malta and Gibraltar. Channel Four argues that Spain saw the Queen’s visit to Gibraltar as a deliberate provocation. This sparked anti-British riots in Spain, started Franco’s campaign against the Rock culminating in the closure of the border with Gibraltar for 16 years in 1969.

Kwei-Armah had arranged to interview the chief minister but when he announced he was going to interview a Spanish journalist to get a view from the other side, the chief minister’s office called him to say that if he wanted to speak to a Spaniard, he would not be able to interview Mr Caruana.

Hence Kwei-Armah referred to the threat in the programme observing he had been all over the world, including some African countries, and the only place where any attempt at censorship had been made was in European Gibraltar.

The Opposition says Caruana is being accused in the Channel 4 programme of placing pre-conditions on a journalist in order to agree to be interviewed over the events of 1954. It observes: “His attempt at curtailing the freedom of the press led the journalist to openly state, when the programme was aired, that there exists in Gibraltar censorship of the press.

“The journalist from Channel 4 thought it might be a good idea to interview someone in Spain who was around at the time, but was categorically told that if he did this, Peter Caruana would refuse to be interviewed. The journalist also claims that by co-incidence, two other people from Gibraltar who were to be interviewed cancelled their appointment when this happened. He clearly thinks they were got at.

“This time, Peter Caruana's bullying approach towards the media in order that his views alone get covered, have been seen for what it is. He has given Gibraltar the image of a banana republic and in one stroke helped the campaign against Gibraltar orchestrated by sections of the Spanish media which already depict us as if we were a banana republic. It appears that because he gets away with pressurising some journalistic institutions locally, something the Opposition has already highlighted on innumerable occasions, he thinks he can also do this to professionals coming from abroad who are experts in recognising the kind of despotism displayed by Peter Caruana.”

The Chief Minister of Gibraltar is always the alpha male ape on the Rock. The problem is that when the tactics used against local political rivals and the media carry over in to the wider world respected international journalists will go bananas leaving the Chief Minister of the day in danger of looking a stupid monkey.

CARUANA VERSUS FEETHAM

Yesterday I blogged on the debate that is going on in Gibraltar over the need or not to bring the age for sexual consent for homosexuals in to line with that for heterosexuals. The minister of justice, Daniel Feetham, seems to have one view on this issue, whilst the chief minister, Peter Caruana, has another.

Dr Joseph Garcia, the leader of the Liberal party who are in coalition with the GSLP observed: “The view of the Minister, who is a lawyer, was that the equalisation of the age of consent in Gibraltar was a legal obligation. The Chief Minister, who is a QC, maintained that it was not necessarily a legal obligation.”

Today I want to take a closer look at the two individuals involved here – Caruana and Feetham.

Like us start with Daniel Feetham. Now I am sure that in the real world he is a greatly loved man both by his family and his friends. I say this because I suspect that in the political world the opposite is true. If there is one quality politicians like in their colleagues it is loyalty whereas Feetham is a carpet bagger.

Daniel Feetham is a highly skilled lawyer. He returned to Gibraltar from the UK where he had been a member of New Labour and promptly joined the GSLP. His father Michael, is renowned on the Rock for being a civil rights activist, helped found the party in 1979 and later was a minister in Joe Bossano’s GSLP administration. The problem was that Daniel Feetham is a man in a hurry and Joe Bossano who is strictly Old Labour was in his way. Now the GSLP was and to an extent still is a Bossano fiefdom so there was only going to be one winner in that tussle. Hence our young lawyer stomped out the door with some supporters and formed the Labour Party which he led in to the 2003 elections.

Predictably the Labour Party failed to win a single seat. I then wrote several columns in which I predicted that the Labour Party would not survive to fight the next election or certainly not with Feetham at the helm. This earned me several angry emails from Daniel in his Lion’s Den insisting that he and the Labour Party were forever so taking me to task for doubting his word.

Come the next election in 2007 there was no Labour Party and Daniel Feetham was a candidate for the governing GSD. He had angered the GSLP, had no friends in the Liberals, had let down his colleagues in Labour and now caused a split in Caruana’s GSD because he was seen as both a threat and an opportunist. Keith Azopardi, who had been deputy chief minister, left the GSD in disgust with fellow member Nick Cruz and formed the PDP. Curiously the chief minister, Peter Caruana, had courted Feetham by consulting him on various issues, using him as a bag carrier on overseas trips and finally appointed him as his minister of justice.

Now Caruana seems not to attract affection either except from members of the GSD. He has been called a small town lawyer who is interested in only speaking to the British and Spanish foreign ministers and accused of ignoring the leaders of the Campo de Gibraltar. However he has won four elections on the trot so even his political rivals have to doff their cap.

In the debate on the age of consent Feetham brought a private member’s bill to Gibraltar’s parliament seeking to equalise the age at 16. It was a private member’s bill because whilst Feetham argues that it is a legal obligation his boss says it isn’t and anyway he couldn’t vote for it on religious grounds. Hence the move was defeated with Caruana voting against Feetham’s bill but now the matter is being sent to the Supreme Court for a definitive ruling.

Now the court is either going to back Feetham or Caruana so one will be the victor and the other the vanquished. I admire Daniel Feetham for one thing – he is determined to be chief minister and doesn’t care which party he leads to achieve that goal. He could be very successful in the role. In contrast Peter Caruana is already a four times winner and seems to take the view that his God will tell him when its time to step aside. Presumably that God is the same one that states that lowering the age of consent for homosexuals hasn’t got a prayer and that God certainly isn’t Daniel Feetham. So what we are seeing here is a tussle between the pretender and his lord and master. It will be interesting to see if Feetham has learnt anything from his battle with Bossano because Caruana will go at the time of his choosing and there are other GSD heavyweights lined up to succeed him.

CARUANA: VIP & VEP

I suppose that if you have been elected leader of the people of Gibraltar at four consecutive elections you rightly deserve the title Very Important Person albeit in a very small pond.

Now it appears that the chief minister of Gibraltar, Peter Caruana, is not only a VIP but a VEP as well – a Very Expensive Person.

According to figures produced by the Gibraltar daily newspaper, Panorama, the chief minister pays up to £1,000 to fly to the UK and back. Well that’s more than I’ve ever forked out flying Monarch or EasyJet but then he does fly British Airways Club Class.

However that is the least of it. The Gibraltar tax payer also has to fund an extra £1,586.26 per trip so that he can use the VIP lounge.

Apparently if he is summoned by the Foreign & Commonwealth Office to see a Government minister it picks up the tab. Now that the lounge is available on a commercial basis, well there is a recession on, he uses it on every visit.

I know that gin and tonics come at a prohibitive cost at the Gatwick airport bars but you have to down a lot of Gordon’s to hand over £1,586.26. So what else does this exorbitant charge give the chief minister? He still has to show his passport but he is excused flashing his toiletries at a security official and bearing his feet. At a guess I suspect there is less chance of Caruana being embarrassed by having a hole in his socks than the likes of me, one of the hoi-polloi, so that little ritual should cause him no grief.

The chief minister is the elected leader of Gibraltar but not the head of state. That honour goes to the Queen and her representative on the Rock is the Governor. I wonder how much he pays to fly back to Blighty?

I also understand that if you are a leader of a small nation you might feel the need to have your status recognised. However it is the people of the Rock who elect their leader and not the waiting staff in the Gatwick VIP lounge who are used to looking after really important people. I wonder how this excess goes down with the residents of the drab apartment blocks in Gibraltar? Ah, but they probably didn’t vote GSD!

On the numerous flights I have taken from Gibraltar on the budget airlines I have frequently rubbed shoulders with the great and good of the financial services sector. On one occasion I espied a British multi-millionaire with his wife and mother flying Monarch and sharing the rubber ham sandwich and indifferent coffee with the rest of us. Then I guess that’s the money-saving savvy that made him a rich man. If the people of Gibraltar are paying the bill – why worry?

There is one other expense the chief minister has to face in the UK – getting from the airport to London. That apparently is solved by paying a chauffer £150 each way. It is common practice for British politicians, from the Prime Minister down, to let the train take the strain by travelling first class. However I hesitate to suggest this mode of transport to the chief minister as I suspect the Royal Train isn’t for hire and if it is, it comes at an enormous cost. But then of course - it isn’t him that’s paying!

WILL PICARDO LEAD THE GSLP?

In my blog of yesterday I touched on the pledge made by the veteran leader of the GSLP and former chief minister of Gibraltar, Joe Bossano, that he would stand down before the next election.

If he is true to his word, and God forbid that a politician shouldn’t be, then the big game on the Rock at the moment is guessing who his successor would be.

According to an opinion poll carried out by the Gibraltar Chronicle 61 per cent of those questioned believed the new leader of the GSLP should be Fabian Picardo. He scores massively over Gilbert Licudi (18 per cent) and the leader of the Liberal Party and coalition partner Dr Joseph Garcia on 12 per cent.

Certainly Picardo has been Joe Boss’s bag carrier on his international trips such as to the UN in New York. He also has achieved a high profile in Parliament and seems to rattle chief minister Peter Caruana’s cage as effectively as his leader.

Although Picardo (a lawyer by the way) works actively alongside Dr Joseph Garcia there is bound to be some tension as Fabian was once one of his Liberal soldiers before he switched ranks to the GSLP. As far as I am aware Joe Boss has yet to anoint a successor but indeed Picardo must be the favourite.

Whoever wins the GSLP crown they would appear to have a battle on their hands. Although the 2007 General Election was tight with GBC in its exit poll predicting a GSLP win Peter Caruana and his GSD just scrapped home. Should a poll be held now then the Chronicle says the ruling GSD would win 62 per cent of the vote with the GSLP/Liberal Alliance on 34 per cent and the PDP at 4 per cent.

Another question is, of course, will Caruana lead the GSD to the polls – but that we will save for another day.

LET’S TALK TO BOSSANO

The Spanish senator and former mayor of Jimena, José Carracao, believes Spanish Government officials should not only be talking to Gibraltar’s Chief Minister, Peter Caruana, but also the leader of the Opposition, Joe Bossano.

He is quoted as saying: “Bossano is a real alternative to the present Government. He has 49 per cent of the vote and lost the election only by a few hundred votes.”

Whilst that is true, the veteran GSLP leader and former chief minister, Joe Bossano had made it clear that he would not lead the party in to the next election. Hence Carracao would also need to talk to the GSLP/Liberal coalition’s bright young stars such as Fabian Picardo and Dr Joseph Garcia.

What is not clear is whether this statement was merely a tactic to goad the chief minister but he says that Peter Caruana has acquired an air of excessive political self-importance - “If it were for him, he would only meet the Minister.” Curious because I know a leading television correspondent was trying to arrange an interview with the Rock’s top honcho without much success.

Carracao restated his support for the Cordoba agreement and believes it has had a positive effect on public opinion on both sides of the frontier. However he is concerned that contacts have been reduced to official exchanges. “Whenever a meeting of the Tripartite Forum is called, the general directors of Britain and Spain and Caruana meet. But that’s it. There are no meetings with institutions such as the Mancomunidad, or with the Campo mayors.”

Perhaps the wily old Carracao is just demonstrating his political nous because there is nothing more likely to stir Caruana from his lofty eyrie than the thought that his political bête noir, Joe Bossano, could be projected on to the centre stage, any stage, and especially one involving relations with Spain.

NO CHRISTMAS CHEER FROM CARUANA

Unless I am mistaken, and I often am, there does not exist in Spain the long tradition of sending Christmas cards at this time of year as we suffer in the UK.

I do receive greetings from such diverse bodies as the Guardia Civil and the Patronato de Turismo de la Diputación Provincial de Cádiz but they come via email, so are not the old style card.

Indeed Christmas seems to have come early this year as I already have had email felicitations from Vicente Peña Romero and the Partido Popular in Benalup-Casas Viejas as well as the Cámara de Comercio del Campo de Gibraltar.

All very nice but it seems that I will not be receiving a Christmas card from Gibraltar’s Chief Minister Peter Caruana – not that I ever did in the past.

The chief minister has announced that he will not be sending Christmas cards this year. Instead, he is saving the taxpayer’s money and £1,949 will be donated to the breast cancer charity.

Unless I have read this wrong, and whilst I am pleased that breast cancer will benefit from his decision, the tax payer will not actually save any dosh as instead of having a card printed and buying stamps Peter Caruana is simply writing a cheque.

Given the low price of postage on the Rock to have spent £1,949 the chief minister must have sent a card to every resident - perhaps he did.

However his decision will leave many people disappointed and an empty space on their mantle piece where the Caruana card used to proudly sit.

Over the years I have received cards from MPs, government ministers, even the odd head of state. I used to put them safely away after the festive season and if I was ignored the following year, dust them down and bring them out again.


I suspect that this festive season the great and good of Gibraltar are frantically searching to see if they can find an old Caruana card to put on display.

And shame on the loyal members of Gibraltar’s opposition parties who have defaced their cards from the chief minister by drawing horns and a beard on his hallowed image.

HOW MUCH?

It has been revealed that the Chief Minister of Gibraltar earns just under £100,000 per year.

Each of the Rock’s MPs in the new Parliament that has replaced the House of Assembly receives £26,042 per annum.

The Chief Minister receives £26,042 as an MP plus an additional £71,179 for his head of government role, making a total of £97,221 per annum.

Ministers, i.e. all the MPs on the governing GSD benches, now earn in excess of £74,000.

That may sound a lot but the Chief Minister, the Minister of Justice Daniel Feetham and opposition shadow minister Fabian Picardo are just three of the top lawyers in Gibraltar’s Parliament. As their fee for taking a client’s phone call is probably around £26,000 you might consider they come at a cheap price.

Chief Minister Peter Caruana certainly thinks so. He told Gibraltar’s Parliament: “I think the Chief Minister's salary represents excellent value for money for the taxpayers of Gibraltar.”

Well he was hardly likely to say "I think you are all being ripped off", was he?

Of course it is for the people of Gibraltar to say whether they think their politicians are value for money or not. However they do preside over 30,000 people and a vibrant economy.

Now take the mayor of Gaucín Francisco Ruíz. He is proposing that he should be paid 64,719 euros a year for running a small village.

The Partido Popular councillor took over the post with the support of the Partido Andalucista in September after a vote of no-confidence in socialist mayor Teodoro de Molino.

For his part De Molino says this figure is ridiculous for a village with 1,732 residents.

Indeed it is – but if Caruana and his gang get whiff of it they might consider they come at too cheap a price and then they’ll want a pay rise too!