Raphael Vassallo Never mind the Labour Party’s four seats and the PN’s 35,000 vote drubbing. Once the dust settles from this election, Malta will slowly have to take stock of the fact that the real winner was none other than the radical, racist right. Ironically, the first to concede this was Azzjoni Nazzjonali’s Josie Muscat, though it is debatable whether he understood the implications at the time.
Shortly before casting his vote in Marsaskala last Saturday, Muscat said he would be happy to see an improvement over the 0.5% his party had cobbled together in the 2008 general elections. If AN fared worse, he went on to say, “it would be a problem.”
At the counting hall last Sunday, it quickly became apparent that AN was facing that very problem. Not so much because Josie Muscat’s main policy platform – immigration and anti-multiculturalism – proved unpopular with the electorate. On the contrary. It was more a case that the anti-immigration vote went elsewhere: in particular, to rival far-right candidate (and white supremacist) Norman Lowell.
Acknowledging defeat, one AN official told a MaltaToday journalist: “(Our result) is probably attributed to the immigration issue. Believe it or not, we are seen as softies when we talk about the issue, so the hardcore voters on immigration will opt for Normal Lowell instead. You’d be surprised, but there are real racists out there...”
In the end Norman Lowell garnered 3,600 first-count votes – more than double Josie Muscat – in what was a clear expression of preference among Malta’s perennially divided rightwing political bracket.
Lowell’s victory over Muscat is significant for a number of reasons. In both imagery and rhetoric, the Imperium Europa founder emulates the classic trappings of the extreme right as popularised by Hitler and Mussolini in the 1930s. His public pronouncements (immortalised on YouTube) betray equal disdain for both Western democracy and Malta’s supposedly Catholic heritage: setting his Imperium Europa miles apart from other right-wing organisations, fashioned for the most part on the American-style Christian right.
When it comes to racial issues, Lowell’s policies are so extreme they could almost be mistaken for a parody of Nazism. His proposed “solution” to the immigration phenomenon is to blockade Malta, and give incoming boat people three warnings before “doing what has to be done”.
Coupled with an insult to the former President of the Republic Eddie Fenech Adami, this suggestion earned Lowell a suspended sentence for incitement to racial hatred, which he was still serving at the time of the vote.
Elsewhere, Lowell advocates the establishment of a “Nuova Europa”: the exclusive preserve of the European white man, with Latin as its lingua franca, and which exploits African resources such as oil and minerals (in exchange for Europe’s food surplus) for its own prosperity.
These and other oddball proposals can be found in Lowell’s opus magnus: “Credo – The Book That Changed the World”.
But is this what over 4,000 voters really voted for in this election? Lowell himself will no doubt argue as much; but a closer examination of the vote itself suggests otherwise.
Upon his elimination on the 17th count, Lowell’s surplus votes were redistributed among a number of candidates, including both Labour and PN candidates... and also AD’s Arnold Cassola, as diametrically opposed to Lowell’s own radical right-wing politics as it is conceivable to be.
It is therefore evident that the Lowell vote – while no doubt including a portion of ideologically committed devotees – also camouflages a sizeable portion of disgruntled, disaffected, cynical and jaded voters, united only by a vague sense of nationalism, and a genuine concern with the country’s changing demographics.
This in turn can be taken as a vote of no confidence, not necessarily in the present government, but rather in Malta’s entire political class – whose increasingly hysterical rhetoric on immigration and multiculturalism can no longer conceal a degree of ineffectualness in practical terms.
Evidently, these voters have steered clear of Azzjoni Nazzjonali, which they probably perceive as too similar in scope to the established PN/PL tandem to make any lasting difference. In Lowell, on the other hand, they perceive someone sufficiently different and “untainted” by the political system to be worthy of their vote – regardless of whether his manifesto can actually be put into practice or not.
Far from a consolation to those appalled by Lowell’s showing in this election, the above conclusions should in themselves sound a note of warning. What emerges from this week’s result is that Malta has somehow managed against all odds to legitimise even as loopy a manifestation of the extreme right as Imperium Europa... and as the country crawls towards what will almost certainly be yet another viscerally divisive election in 2013, the mainstream parties will no doubt learn from Lowell’s (and also AN’s) experience, in the hope of benefiting from the increasingly vocal anti-immigration brigade.
As a result, there may well be four extreme right-wing parties contesting the next election, instead of only two.
Any comments?
If you wish your comments to be published in our Letters pages please click button below. Please write a contact number and a postal address where you may be contacted.
Download front page in pdf file format
All the interviews from Reporter on MaltaToday's YouTube channel.
Ironically, the first to concede this was Azzjoni Nazzjonali’s Josie Muscat, though it is debatable whether he understood the implications at the time. 
