A five-year election campaign is out of the question
If you think the message behind him says Partit Laburista, you’re wrong. It says Moviment Gdid.
It’s time for somebody to call a halt to the election campaign which began in winter last year and which hasn’t stopped since. It has gone on and on, largely because the tumult which ensued from Lawrence Gonzi’s ‘surprise’ electoral victory led to the forced political demise of Alfred Sant and the election to the top Labour job, for better or worse, of Joseph Muscat.
New leaders sometimes feel the need to prove themselves by fighting the enemy and slaying him on a daily basis. Not all leaders feel this pressing need. I don’t remember Lawrence Gonzi doing it when he took over the premiership, and not just the party leadership, in 2004.
But it looks like Muscat has got a lot of self-proving to do. For the last 15 months, the man has not stopped campaigning. He is in the news on a near-daily basis, never with anything positive to say, even about his own party, but invariably with something negative or angry.
Each time I log on to read what’s new (but nothing ever is new) there appears to be a slew of criticism of the government or the workings of the country, delivered by Muscat at some minor gathering or other. The overall effect is exhausting. It tires the mind and reduces the spirit.
It is like listening to a constant background barrage of heckling when you are trying to get on with things. And this dispirited feeling hits not just supporters of the government, small in number though they now appear to be, but people in general. The constant droning and nagging puts us all in a rotten mood.
The European Parliament elections didn’t help by giving Muscat a second wind just as his first year of intensive campaigning would have petered out naturally. Instead of calming down to a level which enables the people of this country to go about their business in some measure of serenity and with a sense of normality, matters reached a crescendo of hysteria in June.
The Labour Party has worked overtime ever since to keep that momentum going, creating ‘events’ that are reported and finding reasons to pop Muscat into the newspapers, sounding cross and being seen more often than is suitable or wise.
Muscat, so preoccupied with not making the same mistakes as his predecessor, has failed to pinpoint the one thing that Alfred Sant got right, and to imitate it. Sant became leader in much the same way that Muscat did, after Labour’s electoral defeat of 1992 pushed out Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici. He was new to those who knew little or nothing of the ins and outs of party politics, to whom he seemed to come out of nowhere.
Instead of working to a driving need to make himself known by being in the newspapers every day, Sant used his relative anonymity to his advantage. He lay low for around three years, appearing in the newspapers and on television as little as possible and using the quiet time as space and cover for the purging of the thug-ridden Mintoffian party that was Mifsud Bonnici’s legacy.
When he had sorted out that mess, and believed he had something to sell, he went to the market. Two years before the general election of 1996, he began selling himself and his party to exactly the same groups Muscat is targeting now. He worked beneath the surface and with the minimum of disruption to the public peace.
It was so low-key that most people thought he wasn’t even a contender. His enemy was lulled into a sense of false security. Electors’ nerves were soothed. And as many know, but Muscat probably does not, people are more likely to take chances on politicians (and other things too) when they are happy, secure and living stable lives than when they are living in an atmosphere rife with antagonism and tension.
Sant campaigned mainly in short, sharp bursts throughout 1995 and 1996. And he won that election. I have a distinct feeling that his chances of doing so would have been negatively affected had he taken to the rostrum from day one in 1992. The reason is simple, and again it is something Muscat appears not to understand.
By putting himself in the public eye every few days over the full run of five years, Sant would have exposed himself to enormous amounts of damaging criticism and intense scrutiny. By not courting the media, he kept himself safe from critical eyes and accurate analysis. And then, in the last year or so, he pounced.
Muscat is learning the hard way, which is rather odd for a former Super One and Maltastar hatchetman, that relentless playing to the gallery is a bit of a risk. Instead of laying low and sorting out his party problems as Sant did, and then carrying out a dawn raid at the eleventh hour, he is working on a five-year electoral campaign that has seen him exposed to significant mockery and damaging media scrutiny already.
No politician can keep up an electoral campaign for five years. Even if it were possible with maximum amounts of tenacity and pigheadedness (to say nothing of political stupidity), it would have the adverse effect of rebounding on the one doing the campaigning.
People tire. They become bored and exhausted. They switch off mentally. They change channels. They no longer want to know. They become irritated with the whining and griping, and begin to see the campaigning politician as an irritant rather than as a potential saviour.
Campaigns work in concentrated bursts of high activity and cannot be sustained over prolonged periods – certainly not over five years. The five years between general elections represent, to the political parties, a semi-cold war. There are skirmishes and battles in that war, but ultimately, it has to be handled like a war and not a five-year shoot-out in Sniper Alley.
Joseph Muscat and his people are attempting to do the impossible.
Just how impossible it is to sustain the hyperbole, hysteria and anger of the pre-electoral period from one end of five years to another was made amply evident by Labour’s mass meeting in Haz-Zabbar last Sunday. It fell into a most peculiar vacuum. Nobody was entirely sure what it was all about – a demonstration of power, a display of rage, or a jolly day out for the masses who could be detached from a really good football match.
To those who are a bit more politically clued-up than the average onlooker, it was just another tactic in an increasingly desperate series of them, aimed at boosting the campaign spirit which has begun, as it must, to flag.
Now enough is enough, surely. It’s time for Joseph Muscat to call a halt to the campaigning and quietly sort out his party’s problems with everything from people to policy, then come back with a bang in a couple of years’ time. It was the one thing that Alfred Sant got right.
Meanwhile, the country might be able to get on with the business of living and working in a relatively peaceful and stable atmosphere, without the distressing and demoralising sound of near-daily haranguing. Put simply, we deserve to be left in peace, and God help those politicians who keep right on bothering us with their noise.
This article is published in The Malta Independent on Sunday today.
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It’s worth remembering that next year will be the first since 1993 when the country will not be facing an election of any sort. Same goes for 2011 and possibly even 2012 when local council elections could be postponed to coincide with the general election.
Under Sant, following general election defeats, Labour could still take courage with local victories, including in places which can only be described as Nationalist strongholds. No such luck this time.
Sadly, that may not be quite the case. We may have a bye-election.
[Daphne – I think you mean a by-election. But anyway.]
Joseph Muscat should send you a cheque and sack Marisa Micallef.
Congrats. to Roger Vella Bonavita for erudite article in Flair. Great issue.
Ah, yes Daphne, you are right (again) but can Joseph Muscat risk being upstaged by other stars in his party such as his two sidekicks?
I was going to mention Charles Mangion, but lately, it seems that it finally dawned on him that being the shadow Minister of Finance is not such an ideal situation for him and he is being silent for long stretches. Not so Leo et al who continue to clutch at straws.
Muscat does not seem to mind, presumably on Marisa’s advice, running a comedy show as long as some of his supporters keep laughing.
I would not offer any advice to him since he will eventually tire his own followers.
Daphne, I assume you are attempting to coach the little twerp on how to stay in the race. Good, he needs all the logical help he can get. However, I feel that he is not enamoured with advice-taking. If he was, he would have rid himself of that gang of thugs, has-beens and never ‘was’s’ who line up behind him at every photo-op.
Feeling the heat?
[Daphne – Not at all. It’s just a factual assessment: you can’t keep up an election campaign for five years. It’s impossible.]
The PN and its allies kept up a continuous election campaign from about 1976 to 1987.
[Daphne – Hardly the same thing. The situation was so terrible that The People themselves were rebelling. They massed in protest out of genuine fear and anger. They didn’t go for a nice afternoon out in Haz-Zabbar, waving EU flags.]
Of course it’s not the same thing – Labour is doing it – so it’s got to be different and bad.
[Daphne – I would say the same if the Nationalist Party were to begin ghettoising its homosexual activists in a special section. It is backwoods thinking from the Superfly era, masquerading as liberal behaviour, but it’s anything but liberal. Liberal thinkers don’t separate homosexuals from heterosexuals: they just don’t give a damn about sexuality and consider the whole person. Ghettos are for people who are inadequate and who must blame their sexuality, gender, colour, religion, whatever for the problems they encounter in life. The most powerful person in the British Labour Party is Peter Mandelson. Can you imagine him agitating in Britain’s LGBT Labour or fussing about gay rights? Exactly.]
“The People themselves were rebelling”? “They massed in protest out of genuine fear and anger”? How melodramatic!
[Daphne – Is that so, Twanny. Were you around at the time?]
If so, how come in 1987 the PN only won by 50.91% against Labour’s 48.87 (diff. of 2.04%)? Not much of a rebellion, was it?
[Daphne – And you’re not much of a social historian. You’re talking about a population with a high rate of illiteracy, a tiny percentage of people educated beyond the age of 15 (or even 12), no access to international news beyond RAI (for Italian speakers only) and the BBC World Service (for English speakers only) or the international press (for those who could 1. read, 2. read foreign languages, and 3. afford the Lm1 for a London newspaper out of a take-home minimum wage of Lm29). Even now, with a fairly high level of affluence, 45% of Maltese have never left the island, not even to go to Catania. Imagine what the figure was then – 90%? The level of ignorance was shocking, and only those who came from my sort of background had any idea what normal European life was supposed to be like, because we were exposed to it through magazines, a bit of travel and the pre-socialist years. I always use as an example of the cultural isolation of Malta’s working-class back then, when around 80% of the population was working-class, the time I brought out a packet of cereal at the Karin Grech maternity hospital canteen in 1986. We had to take our own breakfast when we gave birth, and also our own cutlery and lavatory paper. I was the only non-working-class woman present, and it was as though I had an invisible force-field around me because I was left to sit alone at table. Then I brought out my Coco Pops and immediately there was silence. The silence became mutterings of curiosity and speculation – as though I had no ears and was some kind of animal in a cage. Then bit by bit they all began to gather round, slowly drawing nearer. By this point I was really exasperated and reminded of Captain Cook and his strange white men being approached by natives curious about beads and uniforms. Finally, somebody plucked up the courage to ask me a question: X’inhu dak? Dak tieklu biex tipporga? Yes, right: with all those cartoon pictures of Sooty on the packet. I offered my Coco Pops round and no one would touch them. They were actually scared of cereal. Unfortunately, the history of those years is documented only in terms of partisan politics, elections, violence, and so on. Cultural reality is not documented at all, because these things are not considered important. Yet they are very important. People who are so cut off from normality that they have never seen a packet of cereal and do not know what it is – in 1986 – are unlikely to be able to have clear thoughts on threats to democracy.]
In fact, the PN actually had a marginal decrease in votes when compared with 1981 (50.92%)
We’re talking 1987, not 1887. Things were not that different from what they are today.
[Daphne – They were extremely different, and only those individuals who had access to both working-class culture and non-working-class culture could grasp the difference. The Maltese working-class, which made up some 80% of the population at the time, was completely isolated from the rest of the world, and lived in a ‘cage’. There is absolutely no similarity to the situation today.]
Besides, it still doesn’t answer the question of why, if there was a “popular rebellion” born out of “genuine fear and anger” it only translated into a 50.91% win for the PN – down by 0.01% from the previous election. If they knew enough to “revolt” they also knew enough to vote accordingly.
[Daphne – It does answer the question. People who are isolated from the rest of the world, from civilised, democratic, developed normality, cannot perceive that they are in a completely abnormal situation. If they are unaware that they have rights, they do not know that those rights are being trampled upon. If they do not know what democracy is, what free speech is, they cannot know that they are being deprived of this, or why such deprivation is dangerous. To my mind, what is extraordinary is not that the Nationalist Party won by a whisker, but that it won at all. The people who rebelled out of fear and anger were those who knew that what was happening was perverse, dangerous, abnormal and undemocratic – people who had been educated beyond the age of 15; people who read newspapers; people who knew the meaning of democracy; people who knew what was wrong and why it was wrong. They were in the minority by far, though they did gather others along with them.]
By the way – what’s with this sudden respect for “The People” (with capitals, yet!)
Only a few weeks ago you and the rest of the regulars here were mocking “The People” for daring to have an opinion on the Piano project.
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20091101/local/pumpkins-own-day-in-manikata
Talking of pumpkins:
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20091101/local/mistra-case-might-have-been-a-decoy-joseph-muscat
http://www.maltastar.com/pages/ms09dart.asp?a=5182
If they can’t even spell properly, let alone write proper English (“Dr Joseph Muscat has explained the ten budget proposals in detail at the Msida Committe AGM.”), I dread to think what we’ll be in for when it comes to serious matters.
“He went on to congratulate both Michael Brigulio, a personal friend of his” – A “personal friend”? As opposed to what – an impersonal one?
“Joanna Drake is a person who has shown that not only are the Maltese capable, but that Maltese women are capable and have potential” – condescending twit.
“I believe that when we give someone opportunity we will be strengthening our society and economy. That is what the progressive movement is about.” – a fine progressive movement, led by those three.
Your article makes comparisons between Alfred Sant and Joseph Muscat. When Sant was elected leader of the MLP, the PN had just won another election by a huge margin, the country was passing through an economic boom and frankly he did not have much to shoot at. So he played his cards well. Ironically he won the next election by giving businessmen and the self-employed the impression that they will be paying less tax on their fat incomes.
Eddie Fenech Adami was elected leader of the Nationalist Party in 1977 and basically ran a 10-year election campaign. But economic (and other) circumstances were completely the opposite to those of the early 90s. So it seems that Muscat is interpreting the current disgruntlement, borne out by the results of the EP elections, akin to those of the late 70s/early 80s. Whether his strategy will succeed depends on GonziPN’s response; a perverted two-to-tango sort of. Mintoff, and subsequently KMB screwed up, their reactions helping to fuel Eddie’s decade-long campaign and keeping it on track. One should also say that from the late 70s onward, PN policies were clear and consistent. Muscat’s campaign to date has a bit of “one-two-three-four, what are we are we fighting for?” ring to it.
Hmm. I disagree. Or perhaps I misunderstand, Leonard.
If I had to draw up a timeline of PN political raisons d’être from 1977 onwards, it would be:
1977 -1987: Fighting to keep us from becoming a third world Communist cesspit
1987 – 1992: Reform, reform, reform
1992 – 1996: Need to introduce VAT in view of EU membership, and a host of reforms/modernisation programmes
1996 – 1998: This is our last chance for EU membership
1998 – 2003: EU EU EU EU EU
2003 – 2008: The other side are still anti-European. We, on the other hand, are working to join the Eurozone. Take your pick
2008 – : Here the PN runs into a snag. History has conspired to create the image of PN=The Government. There’s a whole list of projects in the offing (of which we only get to hear of the more prole-oriented), and because any exciting announcement comes from the government comms office, not the PN, it reinforces the “blue-eyed boys” myth. The MLP isn’t doing anything except whine about insignificant details of the “price of corned beef” type. The only thing the PN can do, which it won’t because it’s become too much of a goody-goody, everybody’s friend party, is to highlight the differences in position between itself and the MLP.
I can list a few off the cuff. And they never, ever get mentioned:
Keep our membership of the EU military committee: PN yes, MLP no
Reactivation of our PfP membership: PN yes, MLP no
Position on Turkish EU membership: PN yes, MLP?
Connection to Sicilian power grid+other stuff in view of avoiding third power station: PN yes, MLP no, or yes but?
I think it’s a question of misunderstanding H.P. Just knocked over a glass of orange juice …
Sorry about that. I was thinking about what they (Muscat + advisors) are thinking. One cannot compare today’s circumstances with those of when Sant became leader but neither with those when Fenech Adami became leader. And the MLP’s subsequent actions made things better for the PN and worse for themselves. Still very much “il-mazz f’idejk” as far as Lawrence Gonzi is concerned.
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May I ask why my comment was not made public? Do i have to register? If I have too please guide me?
Thanks
S. Attard
[Daphne – I don’t seem to have a comment from you here. It may have been deleted in error, or it might have just gone into spam. No, you don’t have to register. Please post your comment again.]