Labour’s special weapon
This is my column in The Malta Independent on Sunday, today.
Deborah Schembri confirmed on Xarabank that she will be standing for election on the Labour ticket in 2013. Joseph Muscat was right to snap her up. He’ll probably field her on two of these districts – 9th, 10th, 11th and 12th – where the ‘PN’ divorce vote was strongest and where disillusionment with the Nationalist Party is greatest.
And then the Nationalists run the risk of being hoist by their own petard.
They’d better start some strategic planning as to who exactly they’re going to field on those districts. Poor Cyrus Engerer and Karl Gouder can’t be cut up and spliced into enough parts to cover the lot – but that’s how bad it’s got.
There are precious few others who appeal to Sliema types, on the Nationalist Party list.
The Nationalist Party is against divorce, but when it wants to project a contemporary image, it sends out the only openly gay politicians in the country – who, ironically, stand on its ticket – who then speak in favour of divorce and gay marriage.
How’s that, for mixed messages?
This isn’t the coalition of liberal and conservative politics that Mario de Marco (also popular with Sliema types, incidentally) described in his piece for The Times. No, that’s chaotic thinking.
Schembri would have been a good candidate for the Nationalist Party, assuming those are her politics, but it’s not like she could stand on their ticket, or they could even ask her, after they fought her all the way and tried to mobilise the electorate to vote against what she stands for.
So now Labour’s got her.
The more I think about it, the more it bites home just how crazy and stupid it was for the Nationalist Party to take a position against divorce when the vast majority of its supporters in the crucial 9th, 10th, 11th and 12th districts are in favour and were largely responsible for returning the Yes result in the referendum.
It isn’t possible that the party pollsters didn’t pick that up, because you could pick it up just by talking to people and that’s what MPs are supposed to be for, with their surgeries and their constituencies.
Even elderly people in ‘Sliema’ – a metaphor for a whole area and an entire type – are for divorce legislation. The assumption that because you are elderly then you are super-religious and religiously blind to the necessity for divorce legislation is wrong where ‘Sliema’ is concerned.
I agree that the Nationalist Party should have taken a position, but I was clear in my mind that the position should have been Yes. This is because it made no sense at all to be at odds with the tens of thousands of PN supporters in crucial districts who were definitely going to vote Yes and in fact, did so.
Those are the people, unlike the ones in, say, Mosta, on whom each and every election depends. They are the Nationalist Party’s kingmakers.
The Nationalist Party cannot say, either, “Oh look how many of our supporters voted No. We would have alienated them by taking a position for divorce legislation.” The party has no way of knowing whether its instruction to electors to vote No did not in fact shape, and quite considerably, the No vote.
Certain sorts of electors are more likely to take guidance on how to vote from their political party than from the Catholic Church. We have an in-built resistance to being bossed about by priests, which we resent, but take being bossed about by politicians for granted.
We even like it.
There’s a pretty strong likelihood that if the Nationalist Party had instructed its supporters to vote Yes, then the No vote would have been even weaker. If the party bosses don’t admit to that, what they are saying is that they have no influence at all on their own electors.
If the Nationalist Party couldn’t take a position for divorce legislation, then it should have taken no position at all. That wouldn’t have been ideal – it made the Labour Party look wishy-washy – but it would have been a whole lot better than the self-inflicted crisis that is the direct result of the position it did take.
A position against divorce is not just a position against divorce. It’s a ruddy great label that says you live in another century and are authoritarian and paternalistic, that you want to control what others do and that you even think that what they do is somehow your business.
The sad perversity of it all is that the Nationalist Party isn’t any of this in every other respect. That more accurately describes Labour, which blighted this country by deploying those very negative characteristics.
The Nationalist Party has been marked consistently by its forward-looking policies and its centre-left politics. It is hard to reconcile the fact that the party which campaigned for EU membership and took us into the Eurozone is the very same one that thinks of divorce legislation as some kind of ‘babaw’.
What a waste this has all been. Honestly, what a waste – and all because a few individuals wanted to keep their finger in the dyke (that sounds rude but it isn’t, I promise) for another few years. You know, stave off the inevitable for a little while longer, even if people don’t want you to do so and you’re committing political suicide.
Of course, by snapping up Deborah Schembri, the Labour Party will be able to take ownership, in public perception at least, of the divorce referendum Yes campaign – you know, the successful ones.
And it won’t matter that it was actually a Nationalist MP who did it, because guess what, his party took a position against.
I didn’t need the 20-20 vision of hindsight to see this coming. If the referendum had returned a No result the anger and irritation on my ‘home turf’ districts (my town of origin, rather than where I have lived for the last two decades) would have been a thousand times worse than it is now as we watch the Nationalists dither and draw straws to see who will be allowed to use his conscience and vote No or sit out the vote in the parliament bar.
Why are we most angry at the Nationalists, when Labour are doing pretty much the same thing? Simple – it’s the people we vote for who concern us most. It’s not like we’re not accustomed to Labour behaving badly. That’s why we don’t vote for them.
It looks like what we were dealing with here, in that part of the Nationalist Party which takes decisions about such matters, was a homogenous group of men from practically identical socio-economic/school/family/religious backgrounds who ended up talking to each other and being completely unaware that they are only…..talking to each other.
They actually thought that because theirs was the majority (the only?) opinion in the room then it was the majority opinion in the country and certainly among Nationalists.
When you surround yourself with people who think exactly as you do, you end up thinking that you’re right all the time, even when it is so very obvious to others that you are heading at 100mph for a concrete wall.
There, I’ve got that one off my chest for now.
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So long as the PN insists on tying itself to the apron strings of that hideous, contemptible behemoth that is the Maltese Catholic Church, there can be no ‘salvation’.
This intolerant and insulting comment based on blind anticlerical prejudice is clear evidence that, as the PM implied, the Roman Catholic Church is under attack in Malta.
Joseph Muscat’s comments on the Church are a thousand times more decent than this comment.
Yes, it’s hideous and contemptible to bludgeon and bully your followers into doing your bidding by calling them wolves and brigands, by attempting to scare them with eternal damnation … and the list goes on.
Believe me, my ‘intolerant and insulting comment’, as you choose to call it, is based on clear-eyed and sober observation of what I see and read, but I do not expect you to understand that.
Finally, if the Catholic Church is under attack (I do not agree that it is, I for one, did not attack anybody, I just expressed my opinion, which happens to be critical of what you seem to hold dear) it is not the PM’s job to protect it.
As Daphne said in another post, the Curia is a big girl.
Under attack? A bit exaggerated, don’t you think?
Frank, calling the Church hideous and contemptible is “expressing an opinion” but using wolf and brigand metaphors (used originally by Jesus) is “an attack”.
Who do you think you are? People like you almost made me vote No in the referendum.
Antoine, Frank is calling the Church hideous and contemptible precisely because it called some of its followers (in Church, in all places), brigands and traitors.
As for the “who do you think you are” comment, anyone is entitled to criticize the Church. I think you’re being overtly defensive. The “who do you think you are” comment was certainly out of place. Shall we start asking permission to criticize the Church?
And do you believe that the Gozo Bishop was justified in calling people traitors and brigands in Church?
Perhaps the church is under attack, but as long as that attack is not institutionalised and legal, then it is no concern of the Prime Minister.
The church maybe under attack, but unless that attack is institutionalised or illegal (even then, it’s a matter for the police) then it is no concern of the Prime Minister.
Antoine Vella: ‘Who do you think you are?’ Last ditch defence of one without arguments to make. Observe, how both you and David try to rubbish me (a person you know nothing about) or bully me into silence rather than respond to my critique. It used to work in the middle ages but not today.
As to your question, though boorish I will still answer it. I think that I am a thinking person free to express my opinions.
the PN a homogenous group of men ( and women) identical …. bla bla bla …Mintoff said that in the 60s… the hatred for the lower class units them !!
You want to make us believe that the ‘Sliema’ types voted Yes en masse. And yet, the Yes vote hardly made it in District 10 (8913 vs 8305).
You’d retort that the ‘Sliema’ types are now displaced. But where did they go? Certainly not to the Bormla area, where the Yes trounced the No. So check out the districts where the ‘Sliema types’ moved to: Districts 9, 11, 12… The No vote was very strong in all these districts, even prevailing in District 11.
The ‘Sliema types’ are some of the most off-putting conservatives on the island.
For your ease:
Results:
http://www.doi.gov.mt/EN/elections/2011/Referendum/default.asp
Electoral Districts:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Districts_of_Malta
[Daphne – You’re wrong, but you’re so boring and irritating that I’m not even going to bother explaining to you why. You’d be better off dusting off those cow outfits for the next MEP elections.]
displaced = dispersed
Rather, your article makes little sense without explaining how you got to the awkward conclusion that “the vast majority of [PN] supporters in the crucial 9th, 10th, 11th and 12th districts are in favour and were largely responsible for returning the Yes result in the referendum.”
[Daphne – I have the comparative tables, that’s why, Kevin. So does your Labour Party. That’s how they know that PN voters carried the divorce vote through, and that Labour voters were more inclined to stay at home. Give somebody a ring a Mile End and ask them.]
The vast majority of voters in those districts ARE PN supporters; and the results in those districts are the most dismal for the Yes side. What makes you think the majority of PN voters are for divorce? The ‘Sliema types’ you speak of is a handful of Pepe types whose numbers are going the Dodo’s way.
[Daphne – I did not say THE MAJORITY OF PN VOTERS but the majority of PN voters in those districts. They swung it.]
You’re in the wrong party. Your place is with the Alleanzi Demokratika Liberali Malta ta’ John Zammit.
[Daphne – A party more suited to you and your wife, Kevin, you with your conspiracy theories and she with her cow outfits and NO2EU and whatnot.]
Oh, those cow outfits! But wasn’t that the Tour de Bureau?
No it was labeur de taureau.
Daphne, it is worth reminding your readers that the people of Malta Today, who never read your blog and who condemn you at every opportunity – as they did on Super One’s Affari Taghna some months ago – saw this piece last Friday night, much before your readers did today.
They must be scanning your blog at least every 10 minutes since as you said you published it at 11.55pm and removed it by 12.05am.
Unless one believes the conspiracy theories relating the masonry (Knights of St. John), the Church and the PN I really cannot see the close ties between the church and the PN in the administration of this country. But maybe that’s me!
As for ‘Debohra’, of whom we know nothing other than her divorce policies, I see it as a damage limitation exercise by Muscat.
I know it sounds like sour grapes but somehow I cannot relate to “politicians” for whom it’s a toss-up whether to join the PN or PL.
Rather naively perhaps I expect them to have ideological principles and long-standing loyalty – dedication even – to their party.
In this sense I respect the Coleiro Precas of Malta’s political scene more than the Schembris.
The way Deborah Schembri described what happened made it look as if she was offered a job and, on the spur of the moment, accepted.
You are not alone, Antoine. For me, PL = Partit tal-Opportunisti.
1. Deborah Schembri joins the PL as soon as the referendum is over. She was very insensitive, as was Joseph Muscat.
2. Joseph Muscat wants to welcome back Marie Louise CP with one ‘arm’ and with the other he places the president’s son as a candidate on her district.
3. President George Abela was trusted by Dr. Gonzi and what does he do? His son and his daughter-in-law militate for the PL. They have every right but then I have a right to expect better.
I fail to see why long standing loyalty should come into which party anyone decides to run with. I think we should keep our politicians on their toes, by clearing showing them that it is their actions and results that count. No one get’s an automatic vote just because they happen to be from one party or another. At least not from me.
“…with their surgeries and their constituencies.”
Surgeries?
[Daphne – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surgery_%28politics%29. Wikipedia, the first to come up, sorry.]
Much appreciated. Good to learn something new.
I think you’re worried on your home turf only. Both parties lost loyal voters in this ‘fight’, that’s why both of them are talking of reconciliation and are pointing at other issues.
[Daphne – When I say ‘home turf’ I mean the one I come from, not the one where I live. That’s always the ‘kingmaker’ for the PN. If that goes, so does the Nationalist Party’s hope of winning an election. Or to put it another way: if even ‘Sliema’ is fed up of the PN, imagine the rest.]
The sooner they get this over the better for both of them. They know that we’re fed up.
I can see that Joseph has lost a good battle cry which could have shifted some of the electorate towards his party and scared away some from his party.
The introduction of divorce would have been done within a month of Muscat becoming PM and then we would have been stuck with an incompetent PM steering erratically our economy into troubled waters for the next five years with Dom Mintoff style policies.
Please forget gay marriage with adoption and pension rights. There are more pressing issues which need to be tackled before that.
As far as I know Imqabba is the best ‘rule of thumb’ for our elections. How did it fare?
“if even ‘Sliema’ is fed up of the PN, imagine the rest.”
Right argument, wrong example. The rest are happily lapping up the coattitude (I had to invent this portmanteau of “coatti” and “attitude” since “chavism” doesn’t quite cut it. OED be damned.) The Sliema types are fed up precisely because the PN has refashioned itself into a Xarabank party.
Perfectly right, Daphne. Our PN knew all along where its supporters would vote YES but did nothing about it just like it did nothing after losing the 1996 elections.
A lot of internal talk but there is were it stopped. We won the 1998 election due to the MLP circumstances and not because we were ready and deserved to win.
I was heavily involved in the PN till 2008 but like many others was wiped away because I just couldn’t say YES to everything. Like me there are many others.
Our party should have realised that it was going to lose this one even though one might have been against divorce, but the fact that one could give a lesson to the PN was enough for many PN supporters to vote YES in the referendum.
Now we have the party trying to lick its wounds by causing further injuries – I really can’t believe this is happening.
Hopefully those still within the Nationalist Party who can see sense can put some of that sense into the administration if they want to compete for the 2013 election. The 10th district MPs voting NO can forget my vote.
While I don’t agree with the PN position on divorce, I also don’t think they should base their position on which side is going to win. That’s typical PL strategy.
Baxxter will be excited to know that Labour is rapidly becoming an armoury of fine weaponry.
They have a special weapon in Deborah Schembri and a secret weapon in Silvio Parnis.
http://daphnecaruanagalizia.com/2011/02/11/silvio-parnis-labours-secret-weapon/
My dear colleague Ciccio, none of these are smart weapons. Deborah Schembri is what we would call a limpet mine.
You are groping your way towards the truth but, surprisingly – given your normal perspicacity – you only get there after a lot of sub-plots. The majority of people in positions of responsibility in this country received their secondary education at the hands of priests, one order in particular. Never having attended such a school, even you cannot understand what it does to one’s mentality. And St Dot’s is no comparison.
These people literally think that they’re on a mission. Their right to take decisions on our behalf and that affect us comes direct from God, via His chosen order.
It’s not really surprising that the PN has lost touch. When you get ministers like Tonio Fenech, who has managed to make car purchases in Malta the most expensive in the world, waffling on about the Madonna crying . . . this man clearly has no idea of the pain he inflicts on people.
Anyone who, as I do, works in Hal Far, knows first-hand how it has become a building site, with a poorly planned upgrade that will give us years of discomfort . . . but lots of opportunities for ministers and their klikka (in high visibility tabards, and hard-hats, of course) to ponce about for a pic or two and a few soundbites. And don’t forget that just to get there, you have to run the Marsa roadworks gauntlet.
It’s not that they’ve lost the plot. It’s just that, chauffered about in their beamers, whilst the Common Man is made to feel more like a common criminal for daring to try to use our roads and park somewhere, they don’t realise that even good ideas need to be marketed.
But of course, God never had to market himself, so they won’t either.
PS – This pre-eminent order has just paid 160 million dollars in compensation to people who were systematically sexually abused by some of its members. Not surprisingly, with most of Parliament, the levers of power, the emeritus president and education firmly in its grasp here in Malta, this news never made the headlines here.
Chris, your connection between religious attitudes of MPs and their old school does not necessarily hold true. Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando and Mario de Marco, for example, both went to Church schools – in de Marco’s case, the very same college you speak of – while Austin Gatt attended the Lyceum.
Politicians are not products of the Catholic Church per se but of our culture. Anthropologists have long been describing how religion in Malta is essentially a cultural phenomenon rather than a spiritual one.
It’s part of Maltese identity and as ingrained as, say, language, so it’s no wonder that people from different walks of life, intelligence and education levels, political allegiances, etc should all be so attached to what are, basically, traditional customs rather than religious tenets.