A Mintoffian hangover

I hardly remember Mintoff in power but right up to this day I feel trapped in a country where the weight of the tribal loyalties he fostered still stifles everyday life.

Widespread cynicism on politicians and waning partisan loyalties might suggest that the Mintoffian legacy of “us versus them” is finally on the way out. But while the belief in politicians’ ability to shape history and change things for the better (probably Mintoff's best  quality ) is openly questioned, a post ideological tribalism is alive and kicking. So while people might take their leaders to the cleaners when elections are still at a safe distance, most are unable to see beyond the Mintoffian paradigm in which two political parties compete for undiluted and undivided power and absolute control over a small society. Anything remotely resembling the Big Society remains far far away...

Surely Alfred Sant had managed to cleanse his party of the violent thugs who thrived under Mintoff and the Nationalists (mostly because of the EU) have coloured our institutional life with some of the trappings of modernity. To their credit we have ombudsmen and auditors who scrutinise and even question government decisions even if they have little power to reverse decisions.

We also have independent authorities but more often than not, these follow a political direction set by political appointees. So when the political direction was to accommodate speculators or even squatters , policies were created -often in breach of other policies- to create a smokescreen for abusive permits.  Perhaps it was less blatant than the days when people were allotted parcels of  land at the Minister's whim but the results were not all that different. When the political direction changed, decisions started being taken in breach of the same policies which created the mess. So at Dwejra in Gozo one finds a cluster of legalised boathouses sanctioned on the eve of the election and a cluster of illegal boathouses which MEPA refused to sanction after the election….Definitely an improvement but still within the Mintoffian paradigm where politics  sets the tune to institutions.

The judiciary is still appointed and has little power to commence investigations while the police remains too close to political power for comfort. One example of the current shortcomings is that neither the judiciary nor the police have taken any initiative to investigate allegations regarding the BWSC case. In a normal country one would not expect the opposition to present a formal report when there are so many cards already on the table waiting for someone to pick them up. So we have developed a natural tolerance  for the impunity of the powerful.

So the party in government can afford to let the opposition speak ad infinitum in a way which starts sounding obsessive to an electorate whose attention span is getting shorter and shorter.

Public broadcasting also remains firmly in the hand of trusted appointees, lacking a deeply rooted tradition of independence. Civil society is easily split alongside partisan lines and both parties know that even the most vociferous government critics retreat to monastic silence on the eve of elections.  Sometimes they even perform the role of the "useful idiot."

Most parliamentarians on both sides remain tribalist to the core. Bipartisan initiatives are rare while most trouble on the backbench is resolved by a redivision of the spoils. Surely there are signs of a breakdown of tribal loyalties. JPO’s motion on divorce represented the most radical departure setting in motion a debate which cuts across traditional political loyalties. His independence has also exposed the myth of the inherent stability of one party governments and has affirmed the role of single MPs and thus checked the drift to a presidential form of government ushered by GonziPN and an embryonic MuscatPL.

Still it was more a change brought about by circumstances than by a structural shift which would only come in motion if Malta had formal coalitions between different parties as happens in all Europe. It is thanks to coalitions that populists like Berlusconi are cut to size by partners like Fini.  Perhaps even Mintoff  would have done much better had he had someone to cut him down to size.

I would rather say that as a society we have reached the final frontier of Mintoffianism, where tribalism survives at a time when both partisan loyalties and interest in politics are waning. Surely the more prosperous a society becomes, the less politicised it tends to become. In most countries this is partly compensated by the growth of civil society and issue based activism. But fortunately most countries had their checks and balances fully in place before people got hooked on more interesting things than party politics. If the fundamentals are strong, party politics becomes somewhat irrelevant.

The risk in Malta is that with interest in politics waning, nobody will be there to fight for still absent checks and balances  and unsexy issues like electoral reform and rules on party financing. The few still repeating the old mantra risk have lost their novelty.  For some loonies like Lowell sound more interesting.  Perhaps even this is a residue of the cult of the shameless caudillo whose verbal excesses are all too often forgiven. And while a growing number are no longer voting in the old tribal way, when elections comes a growing number of people are starting to vote in the same way they would do in reality TV contest.

Another legacy of tribalism and Mintoff’s aversion towards intellectuals is that Malta remains largely politically illiterate.   Some might call themselves liberals on facebook as a convenient way of avoiding labelling-but few have any clue on the basic tenets of liberalism. It is even worse with people who might call themselves socialists but harbour fascist sentiments or Nationalists who have no clue of how central universal human rights are to Christian democracy. Probably  intellectual  political debate was richer under Mintoff  whose way of tackling it helped in pushing many potential supporters in to the arms of the PN. The latter than found out that co-option is the best way of tackling dissent.

Coupled to this intellectual poverty is a post modern obsessions with images, style and celebrities which has a crippling effect on citizenship  even in more evolved democracies (Italy is a case in point).  The result of this is that fundamentals like human rights and any notion of separation of powers rest on very shaky ground. The way most people talk about immigrants is symptomatic of the pits we have reached. Some comments casually passed on the internet make the violent thugs of  Mintoff’s days look harmless. Mintoff might me near life's threshold but if we keep going down this road, authoritarianism might easily creep in again without anybody noticing.

It just seems that we are too drunk to even feel the pangs of the hangover harking back from Mintoff’s days for which we still have found no cure. This sickness which pervades the institutions  might well  outlive the old patriarch and evolve in something even more sinister.