Simon’s tightrope act

Apart from reinventing the Nationalist party and attracting back thousands of its disgruntled erstwhile voters, the new leader of the opposition, Simon Busuttil, has to decide upon a number of issues with regards to the opposition's relationship to the current administration, led by Joseph Muscat.

The relationship that Muscat says he wants to have with the opposition is quite different from that of 'traditional' Labour prime ministers. What seems at first glance to be a very generous attitude can, in effect, be more self-serving than not. Mintoff always believed that his supporters had to have an 'enemy', and the PN fit the bill perfectly. The shabby way Mintoff treated the opposition and anyone who disagreed with him during his first two administrations after independence (1971-76 and 1976-81) eventually turned out to work to his disadvantage. Mintoff's style was too highhanded and crude, and this provoked a popular reaction, a reaction that helped, in no small way, Eddie Fenech Adami to rebuild the PN into a rainbow coalition that was supported by the majority of the electorate. Then 'us' and 'them' had been two very distinct groups with no overlapping or gray areas.

Mintoff used violence as a political tool and created a monster that he could not control. The mob even physically attacked Fenech Adami's home and family on one memorable occasion. Simon Busuttil has no such 'luck'. Muscat seems dead set on avoiding a repetition like that of the past. He gives the impression that he is keen to treat the PN with kindness and even somehow involve the Opposition in certain decisions that are normally taken solely by the government. This will certainly reduce the possibility of negative reactions (except from traditional Labour supporters hankering after the Mintoff days) and will make Simon Busuttil's job of rebuilding the PN even more difficult.

One should take this background into account when considering the PN decision to refuse the government's offer to former Finance Minister Tonio Fenech, who was invited to participate in a bipartisan Action Committee on Economic Growth. The PN argued that its participation in that committee would hinder the opposition's constitutional role.

While one appreciates the possible rationale behind this decision, it did seem that this was a knee-jerk reaction more than anything else. In his first speech as leader of the opposition, Simon Busuttil did say that the PN in opposition is prepared to co-operate with the government as long as its role and autonomy are respected. He insisted, correctly, that the opposition cannot be part of the executive.

He also referred to the defunct Opposition Nominee Act, passed during Fenech Adami's 1992-96 administration, which gave the opposition the right to nominate a person that enjoys its trust on the boards of several parastatal bodies. Alfred Sant, then leader of the opposition, arguing in a very similar way that the PN is arguing now, would have none of it and voted against the law. He subsequently refused to use the powers the law gave him and nominate anyone for these boards. When he became prime minister in 1996, the opposition PN insisted on using the law to nominate members, a possibility that soon vanished into thin air, when the law was abrogated by Sant in 1997.

The idea was to ensure that the opposition would be aware that everything going on in the relevant board meetings was above suspicion. The Opposition Nominees Act gave the opposition the right to nominate persons who were neither MPs nor representatives of the opposition. Alfred Sant's objections notwithstanding, it was not tantamount to the opposition being given some participatory role in the decisions taken by the executive.

Yet the idea that Tonio Fenech's presence in the Action Committee on Economic Growth would mean that he would participate in decisions that are the executive's responsibility seems a lame excuse.

Simon Busuttil now says that the opposition will put forward its ideas and proposals because the people have a right to know what it stands for throughout the five-year term of the new administration. But this immediately provokes an obvious question: Why is it all right for the opposition to put forward its ideas in the House of Representatives and in public but wrong for Tonio Fenech to do the same as a member in the proposed Action committee on Economic Growth?

This conundrum serves to show the difficult situation in which Simon Busuttil finds himself every time Joseph Muscat, oozing kindness and respect, invites the opposition to have some sort of input in the way the government deals with particular issues.

There are of course areas where bipartisan policies would do this country a lot of good. Perhaps the two parties in Parliament should identify the sectors where official policies can easily be bipartisan with no discernible differences between the two political forces. This is nothing new. It has been done in the case of Malta's financial services legislative structure, to the extent that these owe much of their success to the fact that the relevant laws were agreed upon and backed by both parties and are not susceptible to changes every time there is a change of government.

There are others areas where similar arrangements can be sought. The ones that immediately spring to my mind are our relations with the EU and our international relations and education sectors. The country cannot afford to have changes in these fields depending on whoever wins the elections. Moreover, today there do not seem to be any serious differences on these issues between the two parties. The PN has accepted the notion of Malta's neutrality. Labour has accepted that the idea of utilitarian university education was nonsense and that vocational education is much more than teaching young boys to whitewash public buildings or teaching young girls how to operate an industrial sewing machine. That past is now dead and buried and we have to move forward.

At the same time, the opposition must be jealous of its identity as Malta's alternative government. This identity must perforce be strengthened by distinctions between the two parties in the way they act and by the differences in emphasis and priorities given to particular issues, even if purely ideological differences have whittled down over the years, as has happened in many European countries.

This must be Simon Busuttil's greatest test: how not to appear negative and opposing for the sake of it, while not coming across as too condescending. At the same time he has to be constantly jealous of the opposition's identity as the country's alternative government.

It will be a veritable tightrope-walking exercise.