Lynton Crosby might not be a household name, but most people will immediately be familiar with his contribution to world politics. He is the campaign manager who steered Australia’s conservatives to four successive victories under John Howard, and who also advised Britain’s Michael Howard (unsuccessfully, this time) in the 2005 campaign against Tony Blair.
Crosby’s tactics? Simple: stick to the same script, with the same slogan (In the Tories’ case, “Are You Thinking What We’re Thinking?”) and limit your manifesto to just six campaign promises that can be boiled down to 12 words: lower taxes, more police, controlled immigration, school discipline, cleaner hospitals, and more accountability.
Sound familiar? It should. After all, add “respect for traditions such as hunting”, and replace “cleaner hospitals” with a “recycling plant-free Marsascala”, and what remains is more or less the precise extent of Azzjoni Nazzjonali’s manifesto for Elections 2008.

Silence on immigration
AN is Malta’s youngest political party, and it is perhaps unsurprising that it should try and take a leaf out of the Lynton Crosby manual of electoral success. But comparisons between Malta in 2008 and Britain three years ago reveal more than just an analogous opportunism between Josie Muscat and Michael Howard. For in both cases, immigration was a major issue as far as the electorate was concerned: arguably more so in Malta than in the UK, if nothing else because of our size and geographical location.
But while in Britain it was the Conservatives – one of the country’s two historical parties – to push the issue onto the electoral agenda, in Malta both Labour and Nationalists have to date eschewed any attempt to ride on the wave of national discontent produced by the annual influx of around 1,000 immigrants. What little has been said in Parliament was limited to occasional (and memorable) outbursts from backbenchers on either side of the House; and in both cases, the parties promptly distanced themselves from their embarrassing MPs, and used their respective machinery to portray their rivals as “racist”.

On the agenda
But if the British experience is anything to go by, all that looks set to change. With elections now imminent, the immigration issue can no longer be swept under the carpet, or – as has been the case since 2003 – used as an excuse to wrest funding from the EU. Few know this better than former Nationalist MP Josie Muscat, and this is probably why he chose last weekend to perform a “double whammy”: addressing a press conference on Saturday about the need for more police presence and greater discipline in schools; and another one on Sunday at the Marsa open centre, in which he outlined his party’s proposed “solution” to Malta’s immigration problem.
Admittedly, much of this “solution” is little more than a loud and boastful challenge to Brussels to “do something” about the issue, without actually specifying what. But there was one resounding battle-cry which is unlikely to pass unnoticed by a growing number of Maltese citizens: “We are the only party with the guts to say what is really happening in this country,” Josie bellowed to the small crowd that attended his mass rally in Marsa last Sunday… although he then ruined the effect, by making it clear that he himself has little idea of what is really going on. “Imagine,” he continued, “your children one day becoming these people’s servants,” going on to portray a dubious and largely fanciful future in which illegal immigrants control the Police Force, Parliament, the law courts and every nexus of power the country has to offer.
But regardless of Josie’s evident difficulties with the concept of reality, it remains a fact that part of his rant is true. Neither of the larger parties wants to touch immigration with a barge-pole, for two very good reasons. The first is that both PN and MLP know only too well that any appeals to humanity on the part of their voters will only cost them heavily at the polls. Conversely, any hardening of the two parties’ already tough immigration stances could easily earn censure from their valuable partners in Europe: as in fact it already has, with Justice Minister Tonio Borg having to sheepishly withdraw a threat to “suspend Malta’s international obligations” after a rap on the knuckles from Commissioner Frattini.
Josie Muscat, on the other hand, can afford to risk the ire of the European Union. After all, he stands to gain votes in the process, and cares little if he loses credibility with an institution from which he has already declared his intention to possibly withdraw.
The result is an astonishing “strategy” on immigration which, although ludicrous in itself, may nonetheless force the issue onto the electoral agenda in the same way as the British National Party’s hardline stance in the UK forced the Conservative Party to change its own policy, and thus the flavour of the 2005 election campaign.
This will not be a first for Malta, as recent political developments have clearly shown. Just look at how Alternattiva Demokratika’s constant harping on environmental issues forced the PN to revise its entire environmental strategy, for fear of losing precious votes to the Green lobby. Could AN’s aggressive championing of the “anti-immigration” bracket likewise compel the two parties to realign themselves in a bid to stem any possible haemorrhage to the far right?
If the experience of other countries is anything to go by, the answer is: almost certainly.

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AN on immigration

What Josie said:
Let’s load (the immigrants) onto a plane and fly them to Brussels, and let’s see how they welcome them there.
What we think he meant:
“Let’s pull out of the EU.” Josie knows (or at least, ought to know) that Malta is party to the Dublin Convention. As long as Malta remains signatory to that treaty, any immigrants “sent to Brussels” will simply be deported back to the first point of entry into the EU: i.e., Malta. So for Josie’s plan to work, Malta will have to first withdraw from Dublin II, and by inference also from the European Union; an eventuality that Josie has already threatened vis-à-vis the issue of spring hunting.

What Josie said:
If all else fails, AN will close the open centres, and make detention indefinite until a burden-sharing agreement is reached.
What we think he meant:
That AN will first overturn Malta’s ratification of the Universal Charter of Human Rights, which specifically prohibits indefinite, arbitrary detention (one of the reasons Malta’s detention policy was limited to 18 months in 2004). But in order to do so, AN would also have to occupy two thirds of Parliament after the next election, as the Charter is enshrined in the Constitution. If nothing else, Josie certainly sees big.
On another level, Josie also seems to be proposing that Malta holds these foreigners as permanent hostages on its territory, until their release is secured by the EU bowing to our demands. This is a tactic identical to the international blackmail used by Libya in the case of British and American oil company employees held hostage in the 1970s; and also during the Lebanese hostage crisis in the 1980s. Needless to add, it will do wonders for our international reputation.

What Josie said:
While in detention centres, illegal immigrants would have to pay for being clothed, fed and accommodated…
What we think he meant:
AN’s policy will render all immigrants indebted to the State to the tune of several thousand euros – a sum they can never pay back until gainfully employed, which is impossible in the permanent detention system Josie himself is advocating. This leads us to the next phase, which is:

What Josie said:
Illegal immigrants should work on embellishment projects while employers negotiate adequate pay with the government, with the income being used to feed and clothe them.
What we think he meant:
That Malta will re-introduce slavery, forcing people to do public work in return for only the basics of survival.