A boring, repetitive campaign

"First he told people to give me a yellow card and now that I am in the field waiting for him, he doesn't want to play. This exposes his shallowness when he wants people to judge others but not him," Joseph Muscat told supporters in Rabat of Simon Busuttil.

We have officially reached the pits. It is clear to all that the campaign for the European elections due next Saturday was scripted by both major parties in a bid to galvanise their core vote to the exclusion of any discussion on the future of Europe.

Muscat and Busuttil have been saying the same thing on a daily basis for a whole month, a truly remarkable feat on their part.

It was clear from before the campaign even started, that all Muscat wanted was a confirmation of last year’s triumph while Busuttil wanted to cut in to Labour’s lead thanks to abstentions on the other side. So while Busuttil wants disillusioned Labour voters to show Muscat a yellow card, Muscat wants them to support him in a gladiatorial clash between himself and Busuttil, banking on surveys showing him as the more trusted leader of the two.

In reality all this is of very little significance for the rest of the country except for boosting or restraining their egos.

Irrespective of what happens on Saturday, Labour will remain in government with a nine-seat majority till 2018. Come Sunday afternoon everyone will declare victory. Busuttil will say we won because "we elected three MEPS and narrowed the gap" and Muscat will say "we have won, because for the first time in history a party in government has won this election."

Nobody will resign or backtrack on anything. Probably on Sunday Muscat will say he will listen to those who did not vote. After a week we will have forgotten all about the elections and our attention span will be taken over by the World Cup. 

Probably this will be the ideal time for the government to enact new planning policies, publish the ElectroGas and Henley contracts and to announce the bids for land reclamation…. just as it was the ideal time before elections to fulfil the positive aspects of Labour’s social programme.

Not that I found Busuttil’s campaign any more inspiring.

His attempt to reach out to businesses by opposing any NI increase to finance maternity leave and the presentation of a motion in parliament which appeals to those who want to make a buck from the healthcare crisis, left me with a sensation that on various aspects of social policy like civil unions and free childcare I feel closer to Labour.

Still when it comes to campaigning style, it is Muscat who is most off-putting. I have a hunch that Muscat has lost his sparkle with switchers and even many traditional labour voters some of which feel alienated by this spectacle.

Ultimately I refuse the idea that next Saturday’s election is a referendum between Muscat and Busuttil. The choice people will be making is that of choosing six candidates who will best represent the Maltese as European citizens in the only democratically elected institution in the EU.  What counts is the competence and values of these people.

Some candidates promise to defend Maltese interests in the European parliament.

Personally I do not feel any need for anyone to defend my interests as a Maltese. On the other hand I would like to be represented by people who defend me as a European from lobbyists and back room agreements like the Trans Atlantic partnership being negotiated with the USA which risks undermining the social model which makes Europe what it is. If it were not for left-wing NGOs and the office of the European Parliament in Malta we would not even have heard anything about this issue.

Malta is not a colony sending representatives to represent it in the chambers of empire but an integral part of an imperfect political union, which needs reforms to make it more democratic, fair and accountable.

Our MEPs will be voting on issues affecting all Europeans and not just the Maltese. That is why MEPs will join European parties and do not form a miniscule Maltese party. What they are expected to do is to sensitize their respective groups on Maltese realities. 

But in so doing I expect MEPs to look at the bigger picture. Opposing a tax on financial transactions may be in Malta’s short-term economic interest due to our misguided dependency on this sector, but is clearly a step in the right direction for a Europe based on social justice. 

Neither is an MEP obliged to defend the Maltese interests at all costs and not to criticise the Maltese government.

The problem with Maltese MEPs is that they do so only when in Opposition and even when they are right as the PN meps were on citizenship, they tend to go for a partisan over kill which makes them look like fools in Europe.

The only European issue to be discussed at length in Malta was migration. On this theme I cannot but note a positive evolution in Labour’s stance from the very dark days when Labour supporters were verbally assaulting Cecilia Malstrom on her Facebook page following Muscat’s pushback threat.  

Still I cannot but feel uneasy at the pettiness of politicians who demand more Europe on migration and less of it on practically anything else.

One may say that it couldn’t have been different. One year after general elections and with no fundamental differences on European issues, the election was destined to be turned in to a referendum on government against the backdrop of a beauty contest between candidates in the respective parties, some of which raised issues, which are not even remotely connected to EU issues. 

Helga Ellul’s latest proposal of a Freeport for luxury goods in the latest in a long list of non-starters.

To add insult to injury we had to bear the crude racism of Norman Lowell advocating "white supremacy", ideas from which even the far right in Europe is trying to disassociate itself from. Although mainstreaming may make the far right even more dangerous, Lowell clearly belongs to a different kettle of fish, more similar to Jobbik and Golden Dawn than Farage or even Marine Le Pen.

Of the third parties contesting these elections (a veritable collection of nutters) Green party Alternattiva Demokratika is the only real thrid party with a certain consistency, history and European vision even if its campaign was bland thanks for an obsession with appealing to an elusive moderate vote-in their  bid to repeat the 2004 feat, achieved in completely different circumstances one year after the referendum.

But at the end of it all, if the Greens did not contest these elections I would simply not have bothered to pick up the vote from the police station.  At the very least Cassola stood for some decency in a veritable circus.

Thank God the World Cup will soon distract us from sad political realities.