Left, right and centre in Malta’s 40-year-old Republic

In contexts where partisanship obfuscates possible points of convergence, one wonders what being politically independent would really entail. Does it mean trying to find a fine line “between” party positions? Or does it mean taking a sober view of such matters, cut through the spin, and assert that ultimately what matters is that a socially just and more equitable society should be defended at all costs?

I would not mince words in saying that the latter view – which I happen to propound – does single one out as being particularly on the left, especially when the claim to social justice is based on equity and evidently on the need to understand liberty as qualified by a republican assumption of shared and equitable citizenship.

More so this asserts itself through the civil liberty and rights that one gains from a republic “founded on labour” such as Malta, to which, in turn all citizens owe their responsibility.

While someone on the right would be more inclined to claim that a free market will adjust this inequity, a position that is clearly on the left would oppose a socio-economic state of affairs where the few continue to reign unfettered and enjoy a huge proportion of wealth while the many who do not own much have even less influence and almost no say. 

Then there are those who would argue that one could indeed operate from a much more centrist approach where there is an assumption that social inequity is kept in control while the market is kept somewhat free. However, those who claim to be on the centre-left, would argue that this balance is precarious and that it all depends on how a socio-economic makeup manages to protect everyone as equal citizens of a republic that does not level everyone down but where each individual has the opportunity and the right to be a stakeholder in society. 

Where is the centre-left?

So when my friend James Debono, in his article Can the PN really become a centre-left party? (MaltaToday, 10 December, 2014), argues that what qualifies the PN as a “centre-left” party is that of being “more sensitive to environmental issues, less inclined to nationalism on migration, and generally less authoritarian and devoted to the party leader”, I have to respectfully disagree. 

The measure that Debono uses to qualify the centre-left, and more so the PN as such, is historically and politically mistaken, both in terms of how the centre-left evolved as a political force and more so how this could be juxtaposed on Maltese politics. In fact here I would even distance my argument from the way Malta’s party political formations have recently become more entangled in each other – notwithstanding their increased antagonism. 

But before we go there let us briefly revisit James’s claim. If a centre-left assumption is based on the environment, attitudes to nationalism and immigration, and devolved forms of party leadership, this could well imply that politics is moved by empty signifiers because in various contexts and from several perspectives, many parties on both the left and the right would claim these instances of policy and leadership for themselves. 

We know from political history that ecologism stretches across a wide span of ideologies. The soil and blood movement in pre-war Germany was very much bound to the far right. On the other hand, the modern Green movement is pretty much on the left. What this confirms is that ecological politics do not guarantee progressive agendas. What puts Green politics on the left are radical social policies that sustain a green agenda; what sustains a reactionary ecologism is a romantic myth of an “unspoilt” past that never was.

Likewise, when we speak of immigration policies we must establish a clear contextualisation, because when essentialised, any discourse on immigration produces bizarre arguments on both the left and the right. For example, it is generally accepted that President George W. Bush gained a huge amount of support from new immigrants in the USA because under his presidency there appeared to be a great effort to regularise the status of undocumented immigrants – even though his critics regarded this as broadly expedient.

Recently some have even made the argument that a recent move by President Obama on immigration comes nowhere near President Bush’s. This might explain why before the second Gulf War, it was increasingly evident that the Republicans enjoyed a degree of popularity with immigrant populations (especially Muslims) whose politics were more aligned to that of the GOP. This was a major factor in Bush’s win over John Kerry. But does this make Bush a centre-left leader? 

As to the idea that a more devolved party leadership is a sign of progressive and centre-left politics, history shows otherwise. Strong reformist parties have succeeded with all kinds of leaders. There were those who lead from the back and allowed their colleagues to take the stage, as Clement Atlee did with Aneurin Bevan. Other centre-left leaders were much more authoritative, like Franklin Delano Roosevelt who never shied away from leading from the front. No one can deny that FDR was a reformist and progressive American president because he appeared authoritarian. After all he was the founder of what was then a strong welfare state and which even now in its relatively depleted condition still remains the bane of the American right.

Labour and Nationalists at the centre

As to the Maltese political spectrum, even when we now have a reordering of political priorities and where the parties often appear to overlap along the centre, I would find it problematic to regard the PN as being on the centre-left. This is not because I want to contrast or compare the PN with the PL (which would be very problematic), but because the measure by which we need to position these parties is far more complex than any assumptions or judgements made on individual policies, rhetorical attitudes, personalities, or simple political blundering. 

I must say that rather than a fudged number of statements where both parties try to please everyone, I personally would prefer to have a clear “centre-right” and “centre-left” alignment between the PN and PL’s political programmes. This would, at the very least, allow one to judge the parties for what they would stand for.

The argument that somehow the battleground for the centre-left is played on becoming a “worker’s party” is even more disingenuous. Pseudo-workerism is an old phenomenon, again found on both sides of the political spectrum. However, workerism cannot be equated with a centre-left assumption. Juan Peron’s populist policies were perhaps the best example of a kind of workerism that was firmly on the right but which also appealed to many on the left.

Again, there is a clear and strong distinction between being a party of workers and a party of labour. Representatives of the working classes founded labour parties. However these parties did not simply resort to workerist policies because they knew that this would limit and distort the political realities in which the politics of Labour had already emerged through the complexities of a much wider Labour Movement. 

Given that the PN’s political roots were mentioned and attributed to Democrazia Cristiana (DC), we must remember that Alcide De Gasperi was neither a workerist nor did he emerge from the Italian Labour movement, even when many DC voters were workers.

As we know, the DC emerged from Don Sturzo’s efforts to bring Catholics into the political sphere after the Pope lifted the non expedit edict by which Catholics were previously banned from participating in politics. However Sturzo’s reformist Popular Party was quickly absorbed by the new DC, which under leaders like Andreotti chose to move further to the right until it came to represent Italy’s conservative Catholic Establishment before it collapsed under the weight of political corruption together with many other parties including Craxi’s Socialists – though we must remember that Berlinguer’s Communist Party only disappeared when the Italian left went into an ideological crisis and not because of corruption. 

Tracing this onto Maltese politics is problematic. In terms of pre- and post-war Maltese politics I very much doubt whether Mizzi’s PN ever sympathised with either Don Sturzo or De Gasperi. If anything, and not without a degree of paradox, Sturzo’s ideals were closer to the Labour Party’s commitment to the social doctrine of the Church, particularly Pope Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum, which remained in Labour’s manifesto even under Mintoff.

We know that Mizzi’s Nationalism was marked by a distinct form of conservative Italianità and an irredentist and anti-British stand that had nothing in common with Sturzo’s political ideals. Let’s not forget that the Christian Democratic turn in the PN was fairly recent, and mostly came down to several leaders who changed its direction: notably de Marco Snr, Fenech Adami, Mifsud Bonnici and the late Professor Serracino Inglott. So when we hear the current PN leaders reclaiming their roots, let’s keep this in some perspective.

Beyond the party model

Beyond any argument over which party is crowned Malta’s centre-left party, what we should be asking is whether in itself the party model really works. More importantly, when we make our own political choices we should be asking: How do we think our politics?

Many would come up with some principles that broadly echo a political party. Some would try to disentangle the categories by which the left, right and centre have come to dominate the political imaginary and its grammars. 

However, we should be asking why do we agree with a political party and not another? Is it because our interests are best represented by Party A, rather than B or C? If that were the case, what dictates these interests? Personal advantage? Family? Social class? Ideology?

Most of the time, the sequence is not exactly clear. So rather than try to claim whether the PN has taken the PL’s clothes or vice-versa, the question we should be asking is whether the model that both the PL and PN have adopted in their respective histories is still fit for purpose. 

These questions invariably come to mind when as in the last two weeks, the Maltese public witnessed and engaged in fierce bickering over party allegiance, weak and strong leadership, accountability, the timing for sacking a prominent minister, political responsibility, etc. 

Beyond the merits of who got it right or wrong, it was clear that the fierce polarisation, which some of us hoped that it would become a thing of the past, is still very much alive in Maltese politics. Yet when it comes to it, what matters is whether we have learnt anything from this situation, or whether the Maltese political imaginary resorted all too quickly to old habits to preserve and seek to reinforce the hegemonies that characterise it.

So while I disagree with his central argument, I have no qualms with Dr de Marco Jr claiming that his party is the new centre-left. However I would suggest that before claiming not so distant roots and making rhetorical arguments, people should take a closer look at how the party model adopted and sustained by the PN and PL seems to leave intact a major obstacle to social justice and inequity.

I see this obstacle manifested in a fixed and almost permanent sense that there is always an Establishment that survives no matter what or who is governing this land. This is not unique to Malta and certainly it is currently felt considering the huge inequality that reigns supreme across the globe. 

However while it is easy to resort to hasty slogans, it is far more difficult to begin to restore the claims and rights of the many, who in their diverse political and social ambitions, cannot be forgotten or ignored for the sake of the few.

To me, beyond any party, this is the political yardstick that matters and this is where I begin to approach and try to understand where the political parties would stand – be it on the left, right or centre!