Four funerals and a baptism

There was a telling moment in the inevitable Nationalist Party post mortem this week, when deputy leader Beppe Fenech Adami informed an interviewer that: “The message we want to convey is that we do not have a right for the electorate to vote for us, but we must work to convince the people to vote for the PN…”

Hmm. If this were an audition Britain’s Got Talent, I’d expect at least a couple of buzzers to go off there. Not so much because Fenech Adami is wrong – he is actually spot on regarding the message – but because he plainly hasn’t understood it himself. Excuse me, but… “the message WE want to convey… to the electorate?”

Quite the other way round, I would have thought. It is in fact the message that the electorate has repeatedly tried to convey to the PN over the last four elections; but which must have somehow got lost in the post.

The first of those four elections was in 2008, and if you’ll remember the PN won it by the sort of margin that can be spanned by the pseudopod of an amoeba. It was also the first election since independence in which the winner failed to achieve an absolute majority of votes.

In Gonzi’s case, this got translated into a single, precarious extra seat in parliament, thanks to our Constitution’s unique ‘Jack in the Box’ mechanism (simply give it a shake, push the button, and… TAH-DAH! Out pops the exact number of seats to form a majority. Guaranteed to work every time, etc.).

It was precisely this greatly diluted parliamentary majority (down to one from five) that would go on to cause all the problems that dogged the ensuing administration, paving the way to its crushing defeat in March 2013. Yet the same 2008 result came a surprise to many at the time: certainly to Labour, which had already popped the champagne corks long before the votes were even counted.

I won’t bore you with a recap of all the details, but it has widely been observed that the single primary factor in Labour’s unexpected defeat in 2008 was its leader, Alfred Sant: who had clung onto the leadership despite losing both EU referendum and 2003 election, and thus had already been rejected by the electorate twice in succession.

All other things being equal, Labour would almost certainly have won. And what message, exactly, does this send to the PN? I don’t know about you, but for some reason I hear the voice of Joe Pesci in my head: “Now look here, punk: just because you won this election, don’t go running away with any fancy ideas. You just got lucky, that’s all. Yeah, we voted for you, but only because the other lot were… bah, just look at them, will you? So don’t get too comfortable in that seat of power… all it takes is a simple change in Labour leadership, and BAM! Your only electoral insurance policy left is history...”

Well, that’s one way to decode it. Others who are not Joe Pesci may use different terminology. Beppe Fenech Adami, for instance, might have said: “We [the PN] do not have a right for the electorate to vote for us, but we must work to convince the people to vote for the PN…”

Oh, wait, he did say that… but… ah well, never mind.

However you choose to translate it into words, there was no mistaking the overall national mood at the time. So of course the Nationalist Party went on to do precisely that.

It interpreted the election result as if it had just obliterated its enemies in mortal combat; and for the next three years – i.e., before spectacularly losing that microscopic parliamentary majority – the Gonzi cabinet behaved as though the Man From Del Monte himself had given them personal clearance to forge ahead with a claustrophobically regressive civil agenda, an energy policy involving sky-rocketing utility bills (which, with hindsight, proved to be the price tag for corruption), and, of course, the same old attitude of “we know best, we’re Nationalist”, “how can you not see how utterly dazzlingly brilliant we are?” etc, etc.

The second election was the 2009 European one, and once again out came trotting the same old mantra of: “How can you possibly vote for Labour, when they were against the EU in 2003?”; and, of course: “Only we can call ourselves the natural party of Europe; everyone else can kiss all 12 of the yellow stars tattooed on our bright blue buttcheeks…”

Small problem: the PN had already used the exact same strategy in 2004… and even then (with Sant still at the PL helm) it had blown up in their faces. Exactly why they expected it to suddenly work for them now, when it had failed five years earlier, is simply beyond my intellectual capabilities to comprehend. But of course, they’re Nationalist, they know best… and if you disagree, it means you’re stupid.

So yes, I admit it. By that calculation, I must be an absolute moron.

Next we had the 2013 general election, and… well, I think I can stop there, because at every point the message from the electorate was always the same. And so was the response from the PN. Incredibly, even now… even after a fourth successive election result confirmed that the change in leadership last October did nothing to attract any of the lost voters back.

Ah well, the important thing is that Beppe Fenech Adami has finally received the message, even if it got slightly muddled on the way. So now it’s time to move on to phase two of the post-mortem. Having determined the cause of death… erm… what’s left to do?

The answer is, of course, to bury the corpse… but hey, no need to bring out the hankies just yet. This should be a happy funeral. It’s not as though the Nationalist Party needs to bury itself, if that’s what you were thinking. Oh no. It only needs to bury those things that have made it so unpopular over the years. And as any psychiatrist will confirm, there is a therapeutic benefit in finally exorcising the demons of your troubled past… especially if getting rid of those demons might also help you win an election in a less troubled future.

So here, in no particular order, are a few of the things that party may wish to ritually bury if they want to get back into the driver’s seat any time this millennium.

1) The EU fan club. There was more than one message to be gleaned from last Saturday’s result. One other little telegram also spoke about the hugely changed perceptions of the EU since distant 2003. Even back then, one could (and did) argue that the referendum was won largely on the strength of concerns with a return of the Sant administration, and had nothing to do with popular support for accession; but let’s not get side-tracked. The most important factor in this election was (ironically, no doubt, but that is exactly the point) the same Alfred Sant’s extraordinary performance.

A breakdown of his 51,000 votes reveal that the former prime minister was number one choice in 10 out of 13 districts. The remaining three were Gozo (where support went to one of their own, also from Labour); and the traditionally Nationalist ninth and 10th districts, where he came a close second.

Yet throughout the campaign, his critics had made a meal of the fact that Alfred Sant had campaigned against EU accession 10 years ago… overlooking the otherwise conspicuous fact, confirmed by Sant’s rocket launch into Brussels last Saturday, that a growing segment of the electorate no longer shares the PN’s rose-tinted (and at times positively mushy) romance with the European Union.

In view of this, the Nationalist Party must bow its head and pay its last respects to a strategy that never really did it any favours since the 2003 referendum anyway. It must acknowledge once and for all that it can no longer ride the crest of a triumphal wave of pro-EU sentiment, when the same wave has long since smashed upon the rocky shore of reality.

2) Demonisation. Alfred Sant’s performance also hammers all nails into this coffin simultaneously; but there are other indicators that the age-worn strategy of simply rubbishing your opponents – and by extension their families, partners, etc – has to be swept out the edifice altogether.

Leaving aside ethical considerations, there are plain old practical reasons too. Heaping insults onto people in a small country is never advisable; indirectly (and sometimes very directly) you will also be insulting their entire clan, everybody who works with that person, knows him or her in a social context, etc. In a word, you will make yourself look like a complete pillock in the eyes of an ever-growing number of people. Besides, there is the PN’s own credibility at stake here.

It is simply too much of a stretch to believe that ALL critics of the PN are, by definition, somehow or other retarded. One or two I’d accept; but every single person who has ever tried to draw that party’s attentions to its shortcomings? They are ALL specimens of an inferior subspecies of human being? Or (even lower down the evolutionary ladder) undercover agents for Labour? Is it possible that not one of them might have actually had a point?

Sorry, not buying it. It is a lot simpler to conclude that the criticism was in most cases justified; and that the PN in government – like all governments which outlive their natural lifespans – had not only become infinitely less than perfect, but had also blinded itself to this same reality.

3) The dismissal of potential in others. This follows on directly from point two. By the same token, it is just not credible that ALL initiatives by the Labour government are instantly rubbished on the runway even before take-off. Again, one or two I’d certainly accept. But to find not a single thing to even distantly commend in a year which has (like it or not) ushered in numerous changes in areas which affect people very directly: either in their pockets, as in the reduction in utility tariffs, or in their family life, as in civil unions?

Not credible. In this respect the PN simply carried on where Gonzi left off in 2013… after a campaign in which ALL Labour proposals had been similarly dismissed as something out of Wonderland. And we all know how that election went in the end.

4) Sanctimoniousness. On this point I’ll concede that Busuttil has managed to tone down the overbearing moral piety of the preceding administration, but there is still a faint whiff of it that lingers. It concerns the private moral compass of individual MPs, and how awkwardly this sits with the responsibility of their public office in passing legislation which affects everybody equally.

Not to stress too fine a point about it, but the electorate is composed of adults who can make up their own minds about moral issues. I won’t speak on its behalf, but as for myself I quite frankly couldn’t care less about the private conscience affecting MPs (on a very selective basis, I might add) when it comes to approving bills in parliament. In elections I do not vote for moral custodians. I vote for whoever I think might make an effective legislator; and the less these people babble about their personal opinions regarding public morality, the likelier I’ll be to vote for them.

Of course, I know that it doesn’t work the same way for everyone. But this only brings me to the last point. Less of a burial this time: think of it as the christening of a new policy (dare I say it, a ‘new way of doing politics’). The PN should be looking to identify the sort of person it actually wants to represent in parliament, and then just stick to representing that category of voter.

Trying to be liberal with the liberals, and conservative with the conservatives, simply cannot work in today’s Malta. Last Saturday’s result alone spells this out in no uncertain terms.

I won’t presume to instruct the PN which of its two internal warring factions to retain and which to evict. Instead I’ll just quote the founder of the ‘religio’ that officially inspires the PN as a Christian Democratic party.

“Thou canst not serve cod and gammon”, he said. And he was right. It’s a truly awful combination, guaranteed to make you want to throw up.