Labour leader Joseph Muscat is counting on disgruntled categories of former PN voters blowing a raspberry to GonziPN over purely local issues: JAMES DEBONO analyses Labour’s ‘European’ campaign
Everyone with an axe to grind seems welcome aboard Labour’s Euro 2009 bus.
“If you are an employee at GO, or at the Drydocks; a hunter, a bus owner, or a taxi owner, or a teacher, or a minibus driver, or a hearse owner only one person took you for a ride; Lawrence Dr Gonzi,” Muscat said in one of his most revealing campaign speeches of the campaign.
According to the Labour leader, the forthcoming election offers these very different categories of voters an opportunity to “show that this population will not let itself be swindled any longer.”
By embarking on this strategy Muscat is projecting himself as a populist leader who rides the crest of any form of disgruntlement, without making any enemies.
Unlike former leader Alfred Sant, Muscat – whose investiture was celebrated at Charles Polidano’s Montekristo winery – does not seem interested in shooting down “barons”, who no longer feature in Labour’s campaign script.
But while this strategy may be a winning one in a European election where the country’s government is not at stake, Muscat must be wary not to raise expectations of every disgruntled group whose demands he will never be able to entirely satisfy without losing his credibility.
So far, the savvy Muscat has skillfully exploited disgruntlement without making any promises. Time is also on his side, because the general elections are four years away.
Like Sant before 1992, he is forging a formidable but disparate coalition. But unlike his predecessor, he is careful not to provide ammunition to the PN by proposing things like re-opening the EU package to save dockyard workers’ jobs.
Hunting with the hounds Joseph Muscat was also honest enough to tell hunters that membership in the European Union does not make it possible for spring trapping to continue, arguing that whoever is saying otherwise is taking the hunting community for a ride.
Yet Muscat does not stop there.
He speaks vaguely about “other measures” that can be taken for trapping to be permitted in different seasons, without even hinting at what he has in mind.
And he never stops reminding the hunting community that it was cheated and even claims that “many hunters are under considerable psychological strain” because of the broken promises.
But apart from sending them to the shrink, there seems to be nothing Muscat can do to cure the deceived hunters. Instead, he is merely telling them is that although their vote will not bring spring hunting back, they can use it to punish the PN. In other words, Muscat – like Gonzi before him – is giving hunters the illusion that they can continue dictating the political agenda of the country.
Going for a ride In another demonstration of political opportunism, Muscat – who expressed his agreement with liberalisation of public transport during last year’s wild cat transport strike – could not resist appealing to bus owners whose monopoly is being axed by Austin Gatt, who intends to open a public tender for the operation of the service.
Instead of pressing on the government to impose the strictest conditions possible on any future bidder or proposing a public-private partnership, where the state will have a decisive say on public transport, Muscat seems more interested in the bus owners’ votes.
And neither could he resist welcoming a former Gozitan Nationalist MP whose main bone of contention with the government was that Austin Gatt did not keep his promise to keep him on some government board, to “kill time”.
Immigration disclaimer
Just as he tries to avoid making any promise which could prejudice his position in the future, Muscat manages to exploit anti immigrant sentiment without sounding racist or xenophobic.
In fact whenever he speaks about immigration he adds a disclaimer; that “immigrants are not guilty for the problems facing Malta, and it would be unacceptable to blame them.”
Yet very much unlike his predecessor Alfred Sant, Muscat has shown no qualms in turning this issue in to a game of political football, insisting that he is against the “illegality” of the phenomenon. However, the same Labour leader showed no qualms on legality when renewing his party’s promises to the Armier squatters in a meeting with the squatting lobby last March.
And behind the humanistic veneer, Muscat was the first to suggest suspending Malta’s international obligations to rescue immigrants in the high seas, if the country is deemed to be “full-up”.
He even plays on pitting Maltese workers against immigrant workers by calling for an end to the exploitation of migrant workers without saying how.
For while the long term solution is to integrate immigrants in the labour market in a way that they would have the same conditions and rights as Maltese workers, one suspects that what Muscat has in mind is to arrest those who are already working.
Like Gonzi, Muscat even gave his blessing to the forced repatriations from Italy to Libya: a move that was condemned by the UNHCR, the Vatican and the Italian left-wing opposition, but unanimously approved in Malta where human rights are very low on the political agenda.
This will not cost Muscat any votes, but it certainly tarnishes his progressive credentials.
Divorce dissent In a sense Muscat has tried to compensate for this by pushing a liberal agenda on civil liberties, even if his commitment to introduce divorce – like that of Alfred Sant in 1992 – remains a personal one. In fact he has tied the issue to a free vote in parliament, giving his own MPs the opportunity to vote against a civil right. And with a considerable number of Labour MPs expressing opposition to divorce, it is highly improbable that a divorce bill will ever be approved.
Fighting windmills
Speaking to farmers in Wied Rini, Bahrija, Labour leader Joseph Muscat even took umbrage at the most promising wind farm development in the country – originally proposed by the eminent environmentalist and scientist Prof. Edward Mallia.
By calling on the Prime Minister to stick to his pre-electoral pledge to exclude land based windfarms, Muscat has once again opened a rift between his party and good environmental science.
And he seems to be only doing this to ride on the crest of popular misconceptions and irrational fears.
What is Muscat expecting: that the government sticks to its irrational pre-electoral promise to develop deep sea water wind farms, for which the technology does not even exist?
On this issue Muscat seems to have overstepped his own caution by giving the impression that a future Labour government would exclude land-based wind farms.
This would be a throw back to Ninu Zammit’s reign of inertia when Malta lost five valuable years as the rest of the world started developing wind energy projects.
Motley crew It is no wonder that Gonzi features more prominently in the Labour campaign than the Labour candidates themselves.
After proving unable to rid his party of Jason Micallef – now the albatross around his neck – Joseph Muscat has also shown an inability to impose his own moderate brand of candidates on his own party.
He ended up fielding a motley crew of incumbents like John Attard Montalto and Glenn Bedingfield, both known for their absences or pushing the wrong buttons on crucial votes in the European parliament; diehards like Joe Cuschieri, who could not stand the heat of a face to face interview with MaltaToday; and Sharon Ellul Bonici whose recent ties with Eurosceptic fringe parties have returned to haunt her on the eve of the election.
Even the level-headed Marlene Mizzi confounded voters through her admission of having voted Labour in 2003 weeks just after voting ‘Yes’ in the referendum.
The only Labour candidate to represent a break with Labour’s proverbial incompetence. Fortunately for the Labour leader, surveys indicate that the soft-spoken economics guru has emerged as his front runner. Yet the risk of voters electing a Bedingfield, an Attard Montalto or a Cuschieri remains very high.
But even Scicluna’s candidature could be a mixed blessing. For his past stance favouring structural economic reforms contrasts with Labour’s reluctance to address pension and health reforms, albeit from a social democratic perspective.
For Labour is still evasive in choosing or proposing the right mix between the two prevailing fiscal models; lower taxation and thus lower spending on public services or higher taxation to keep these services free and universal.
Muscat’s big test Ultimately, turning next week’s Euro election into a sort of referendum on GonziPN seems to be Muscat’s winning strategy.
For Lawrence Gonzi, the dilemma is: how far he should involve himself in the electoral campaign for next June’s elections?
If he washes his hands of his party’s fate by relegating the European elections to a kind of secondary election, he might well condemn his party to a humiliating defeat... as well as undermine the institution of the European Parliament among Nationalist voters.
But if he exposes himself too much in the campaign he also risks lending his face to a likely electoral disaster. For the probabilities of a defeat for the ruling party are high, considering the dip in purchasing power in the wake of the global economic crisis, and the unpopular recent hike in utility tariffs.
The Labour billboards, comparing Gonzi to a driver who has lost control, serve to ensure that Gonzi does not have the option of ‘chickening out’ of the elections.
But despite the focus on Gonzi, the stakes in the forthcoming election could be even higher for Joseph Muscat than for Gonzi himself.
For Gonzi will enjoy the strange advantage of starting the race from 2004’s abysmal result when it didn’t even scrape past the 40% mark... while Muscat will have to surpass the 48% mark, when the party was led by a largely discredited Alfred Sant – who just a year before had claimed that “partnership” had won the referendum on EU membership.
Ultimately, by winning the forthcoming elections Muscat will strengthen his own position as PL leader, year after the fratricidal succession struggle which left the party in turmoil. Yet Muscat’s negative campaign could well serve to swell the ranks of non-voters.
If Labour wins only by default, Gonzi will have scored yet another pyrrhic victory. For if disgruntled Nationalists cannot even trust Labour in a mid-term European election, where most European governments are trounced, it is even more unlikely that they would do so in a national election.
From a long term perspective, a very high abstention rate might well be a blessing in disguise for Lawrence Gonzi, and a curse for Joseph Muscat who might grow over confident after the June 6 triumph.
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