News | Sunday, 28 December 2008

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Love me do

In times of plenty, his charm offensive could well have been the Labour’s trump card. But in stormy and uncertain times, love might be not be the answer after all. James Debono on Joseph Muscat’s first six months at the PL helm

In 1990s, as the rising star of the new generation of Labourites cultivated by Alfred Sant, Joseph Muscat found his inspiration in Tony Blair’s New Labour.
Tony Bair’s disarming smile worked wonders in a world dominated by an illusion of certainties, which prevailed before the onslaught of the global credit crunch.
It was hard to question Blair’s departure from orthodox socialism at a time when belief in the free market acquired the status of a religious dogma, and in a world of plenty where wealth was expected to trickle down to the masses without pain and struggle.
Had Muscat been elected leader in the 1990s, he may well have been what Sant never was – a kitsch Maltese version of Tony Blair, with all the charisma and tact that the former Labour leader lacked.
Under Sant, Labour drifted towards the “right” while retaining Old Labour’s outdated structures and paranoia.
But now Muscat finds himself in a completely different political context.
Muscat might well find himself in the same quandary as British Conservative leader David Cameron, who, after the initial hype, is finding the tried and tested Gordon Brown a harder nut to crack in a time of crisis.
Muscat has so far scored most of his brownie points by re-branding his party’s image. But his project was dented by the reluctance of the old guard to step down on its own accord.
In a bid to reconcile with the Mintoffian ancien regime, Muscat’s party even resurrected relics of the past like former foreign ministerAlex Sceberras Trigona, who was elected international secretary.
And Joseph Muscat was either too weak or too obliging, to show Jason Micallef – one of Labour’s architects of defeat – the way out.
And the re-election of Micallef gave the impression that Muscat’s recent fiddling of party structures was more an exercise in damage limitation than the epochal earthquake he promised.
For Muscat the constant dilemma is whether he prefers to be feared or to be loved. By choosing love over fear, he is declaring his love to too many people at the same time, thus risking disappointment among those he promised eternal love.
For as soon as he was elected leader, he embarked on a charm offensive, opening the doors of the party to former ministers like Joe Grima, and even inviting Peppi Azzopardi – whose programme the MLP had boycotted – to join a commission to reform the party media.
By recruiting economist Edward Scicluna and former Sea Malta chairman Marlene Mizzi as star candidates for the forthcoming EP elections, he showed strategic shrewdness in reaching out to middle of the road voters.
Yet Scicluna and Mizzi will share their platform with eurosceptics like Sharon Ellul Bonici, Mintoffians like Maria Camilleri, media darlings like Claudette Baldacchino and party faithful like Joe Cuscieri, whose claim to glory was sacrificing his seat in parliament so that Muscat could become leader of the Opposition.
The problem for Labour is that by trying to appease different audiences, it risks a cacophony that disorients the discerning voter.
And since Labour can realistically elect a maximum of three candidates, the party machinery will play a big part in deciding who will be elected.
By next June Muscat might end up facing the resentment of those he had approached to contest, but who failed to get enough backing to get elected.
Surely, being liked is very high on Muscat’s agenda. He started his long march to victory by amplifying the very character traits which distinguished him from the austere Alfred Sant: charisma and personal warmth.
There could be no fitting contrast with Alfred Sant’s austere ways than Joseph Muscat’s tight embrace with the bubbly Maria Camilleri – estranged from the party in the Sant era – in his first rally as party leader, in which he informed Labourites that he loved them all.
And for the first time since Paul Boffa, the PL is led by a family man. While the contrast with his predecessors has played to Muscat’s advantage, he has already overplayed his wife’s role: losing a valuable asset which was only used by Gonzi in the last year before the election.
Inevitably, with both Muscat and Gonzi pandering to charisma and family life, Maltese politics seemed destined to become more presidential and Americanised.
The great risk is the sacrifice of political content on the altar of the political market, where good looks – more than good ideas – matter.
Yet shaken tp its foundation by the crash of its financial system, America itself has given us a lesson by choosing Barack Obama after being offered a clear choice between a conservative and a progressive.
For despite his appeal to voters of all persuasions, Obama did not rely on charm alone and gave the impression that he really stood for something different.
Even after being elected he has no qualms in declaring his support for striking workers in Chicago – an unthinkable act for any US President since Ronald Reagan.
Neither did Obama’s views on “spreading out the wealth” scare Americans in the post credit crunch world.
For his words were in synch with the difficult times faced by Main Street, which had lost all trust in the “trickle down, Wall Street-first, Main Street-last” policies.
In short, the tectonic plates of global politics have moved the political centre to the left again. And luckily for Muscat, under Gonzi the Nationalists have discovered a love for balanced budgets and full cost-recovery plans – finding themselves entirely unprepared for a crisis which questions their most fundamental axioms.
But so far, Muscat has reacted with caution, perhaps because he is too scared of alienating the Maltese power elite.
His only “radical” stand has been to promise a divorce bill in parliament if elected to power, without even committing his party to support him, despite knowing that a number of Labour “teocons” will vote against him.
Under Muscat the party has also gone a long way towards recognising the importance of environmental issues, mainly thanks to Muscat’s high profile choice of Leo Brincat as spokesperson on the environment.
Muscat’s proposal to give 16-year-olds the right to vote in local councils could be interpreted as an attempt to seduce younger people: a category which won the PN the March election, according to MaltaToday surveys.
Still this proposal looked more like a hyped-up PR gimmick which failed to inspire any teen uprising to protest for the right to vote.
He also tried to score points on immigration, pandering to the same fears nourished by the Far Right by lashing out at the government’s inability to get a better deal from Europe.
Walking on a tight rope, he did this while showing his solidarity with migrants. This could be an easy game to play when in Opposition, but less so when one assumes the reins of government.
It is on the social and economic front that Muscat’s party desperately needs a vision consistent with its centre left credentials.
For as Obama himself recognised, conservative working class voters “express their bitterness by clinging to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”
Ultimately, Labour has to come up with credible solutions which address these frustrations. For while it is very easy to say that government should put more money in people’s pockets at a time of crisis, Labour has to show us from where this money will come from.
Even Blair’s government had no qualms in imposing a windfall tax on previously privatised monopolies which were making extraordinary profits.
Labour will have to explain whether it still clings to the trickle-down approach advocated by Sant when he was in government, or whether he intends to spread the wealth.
It would be nice to know where Labour stands on the farming out of public services, and whether Muscat would keep the postal services and the gas supply in private hands.
So far, all we have been told that Labour is a progressive party. This is a good omen in a country where social conservatives have been in power for too long in both traditional parties.
But to inspire in these troubled times, Muscat needs more of the Obama vision and less of the cosmetic smiles and gimmicks reminiscent of Tony Blair.

jdebono@mediatoday.com.mt

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