The result of the survey published last Sunday in this newspaper, showing that new MLP leader Joseph Muscat is ‘more trusted’ than the PN leader was no surprise. At the moment Joseph is still enjoying his ‘honeymoon’ while the electorate has a serious bout of post-electoral blues that has hit the PM’s popularity like a sledgehammer blow.
In any case, I have always maintained that in the next general elections in another four and a half years, Joseph Muscat stands to benefit from being the new untried kid on the block and therefore materially and actually representing change, a ploy that Alfred Sant could only pull off in 1996.
It is perhaps revealing that polls carried out on behalf of the PN before the 1996 election showed that the untried Alfred Sant was more ‘trustworthy’ than Eddie Fenech Adami. That was the only time that Alfred Sant was more popular than the PN leader and that was the only election that Sant won. The picture was completely quite different after Sant was tried and found lacking!
The real surprise was Evarist Bartolo’s article in l-orizzont on Friday 5th September. An English version of the same article, also signed by Evarist Bartolo, was published in this newspaper last Sunday. In it, Bartolo insists that Labour should start thinking of pushing for a red-green coalition. He is, no doubt, inspired by similar coalitions in other EU states and by the fact that although the PN obtained a relative majority last March, the MLP and AD together garnered more first-preference votes than the PN. In a rather bizarre and unusual twist, Bartolo’s opinion obtained the unreserved approval of Labour MP Helena Dalli writing in l-orizzont on Monday. Considering the result of the MaltaToday survey, Bartolo’s proposal seems to be out of step with the current popular perception of the MLP’s future electoral prospects as it reflects the fear that the MLP cannot do it alone.
The PN media spun Bartolo’s article as if it was a sign of his lack of confidence in Joseph Muscat’s leadership since it indirectly implied that the MLP under Joseph Muscat cannot do it alone. I find this ‘interpretation’ as being too simplistic and a bit naïve. Bartolo wants to ensure a Labour victory come 2013 and this means that no stone should be left unturned if it helps to this aim. Bartolo wants to see that nothing that can possibly help bring Labour victory is put by the wayside. This does not necessarily means he has no confidence in Muscat’s leadership.
At face value, moreover, there is a lot of mathematical sense in what Bartolo is proposing; but the proof of the pudding is in the eating and in this case the eating could lead to AD being completely swallowed up by the MLP and so disappear into oblivion.
I say this because, the Constitutional clauses regarding majorities in general election refer to majorities of votes obtained by single parties and not to that obtained by a would-be alliance of parties. So long as no radical changes are carried out in these Constitutional provisions, there is no way that the red-green majority can be translated into a majority of seats, unless the MLP and the AD were to contest the election under a single ‘party’ list. The mechanics of translating what Evarist Bartolo’s pitch into a concrete doable proposal are therefore fraught with difficulties if AD is to remain a distinct political party contesting the elections as such.
In her article, Helena Dalli emphasised that the MLP has to be open for all and create a majority of anti-Nationalist votes – the sort of rainbow coalition that Eddie Fenech Adami managed to create in 1981 as a reaction to the excesses of the Mintoffian regime. Back then, removing Mintoff from power was a sine qua non to the majority of the electorate and this was what spawned the majority of votes that the PN garnered in 1981 for the first time ever in Maltese post-war political history. That is why this coalition disintegrated in 1996 when Labour’s great hope in the form of Alfred Sant sold the message that under his leadership Malta would never return to the Mintoff days. The rest is history. Even in the deepest of pits, Gonzi’s administration can never provoke such an extreme adverse reaction to its policies and its way of doing things. Labour’s way forward cannot be an attempt at creating and leading such a coalition but to capitalise on the perception that the PN is a spent force that needs to go into opposition to reinvigorate itself, just as the MLP would have been reinvigorated under its new leader.
After almost two whole terms in office, it will be very difficult for Lawrence Gonzi to win yet another general election when the MLP will be led by a young fresh man. Barring some unpredictable predicament, Joseph Muscat is set on his way to victory in four and a half years time.
In these circumstances, I cannot understand why Evarist Bartolo felt he had to go public with his red-green coalition proposal. I would have thought that such an idea would have first been mooted in the proper party structures rather than being touted in an exercise of public kite-flying. Is Bartolo worrying too much or is he feeling being left out of Muscat’s plan to reinvent the MLP? Is Helena Dalli in the same situation? Is this why they seem to be out of step from Joseph’s potential march to victory, when this is currently the popular perception as reflected in the MaltaToday survey?
Interestingly, a recent issue of The Economist attests that ‘the mainstream left seems to be in trouble all over Europe’. Cameron is set to win the next British election; the Spanish socialists have an unprecedented economic downturn and a property bust on their hands; the French left is beset with continuing personality clashes; and the German socialists are in disarray losing members and popularity.
There are several reasons for this decline. According to The Economist, one of them is that long periods in opposition have “helped the right to reinvent itself and shake off an image of outdatedness”.
Although the circumstantial mechanics are practically the same, in Malta it is the democratic left that is reinventing itself and shaking off its image of being outdated, not the other way around.
Malta is the exception that proves the rule! Not to worry. Malta’s political cycles have always been out of step with what happens in mainstream Europe.