‘More of the same’ dominates deputy leader debate

Considering the media hype leading to this evening's 'deputy leader's debate' on TVM - originally intended just to be a standard Dissett interview with Labour's Louis Grech, but which had to change format to accommodate Simon Busuttil after much brouhaha involving the Broadcasting Authority - expectations of a high-profile showdown fizzled out very quickly into the event itself.

Much of the hour-long exchange was rooted firmly in the notion that Grech and Busuttil, both MEPs, had brought to the table a new and more 'European' way of doing of politics. But while the overall tone of the debate was considerably calmer and more polite than usual, in practice the only discernable difference was one of style, not of substance at all.

For instance: neither resorted to the usual tactic of simply shouting the other down, but there were still interruptions galore. Busuttil, for one, made it hard for his counterpart to get a word in edgewise... leaving an often visibly frustrated Grech to waste much of his allotted airtime complaining about the lack of fair play.

Equally evident were all the usual barrel-scraping gimmicks and techniques we have come to expect from such televised debates - perhaps reaching their lowest ebb when Busuttil read out loud a series of quotes regarding Labour's former attitudes towards the European Union...for all the world as if we were on the eve of the 2004 election, and not 2013 at all.

But the biggest let-down (for those who were expecting a genuine change in approach) concerned the relevance of what was actually said during the debate. Veteran TVM presenter Reno Bugeja may have been at his usual, level-headed best - certainly he cannot be blamed for asking his guests any vague or irrelevant questions - but not even the most direct line of questioning (eg. "Yes but what will you actually DO if elected?") managed to elicit anything resembling a concrete and coherent answer from either Grech or Busuttil.

As expected, Louis Grech was the more guilty party in this regard. For while Busuttil did at least have a standard retort to fall back on ("We've already presented our Budget, so you know where you stand with us"), Grech proved immensely effective at diagnosing the myriad flaws of the current administration - the mismanagement, the piecemeal approach to problems, the fiascos, the lack of clear policy direction on so many issues, starting with energy, etc... but in the end, viewers were left absolutely none the wiser regarding the Labour Party's own proposed solutions for any of the above.

Instead, all we got was a standard "wait and see" reply: hardly satisfactory, given the sheer proximity of the election.

Besides, on the rare moments when he was left free to talk uninterrupted - and thus choose for himself the battle terrain - Grech proved reluctant to say anything worth reporting. For instance, when talk turned to Air Malta - as it did fairly frequently - the former chairman of the national airline limited his contribution only to say: "if you like we will discuss that in another programme, just you and I...": adding that on this subject alone, he had perhaps more insider knowledge than others.

All well and good, but... why was it not possible to talk about the same subject in slightly lesser detail yesterday? Inevitably, one gets the impression that Louis Grech was simply unprepared or unwilling to talk about it: which is not the sort of depth one expects from a European approach to such matters.

Then there were contradictions of simply Biblical proportions on either side. After accusing Grech of 'inconsistency', Busuttil went on to radically reinvent his own party's former positions on a number of issues. Incredibly, he even cited the introduction of low-cost airlines as one of the feathers in the PN's cap... quite forgetting that the Nationalist government had actually resisted this development tooth and nail for almost a decade, and only very grudgingly accepted their introduction under intense pressure from the tourism lobby.

But such was the reluctance of either deputy leader to provide concrete details about on his own party's proposals, that the bulk of the discussion was limited largely to the standard, ritual exchange of accusations and calculated barbs (though admittedly couched in far less aggressive terms than usual).

This was clearly more familiar territory for Busuttil, who often successfully put his opposite number on the defensive: about his own election at the expense of Anglu Farrugia (who now seems to have become a folk-hero for the Nationalists, of all things), and also about the Labour Party's highly dubious track record on both employment and matters concerning human rights.

Grech may have been somewhat less eloquent at this level of the debate - often his sentences trailed away into incoherent mumbles - but he did give as good as he got in return. At one point, he turned the tables onto Busuttil over his own party's much more consequential internal problems... a line of attack which culminated in what was arguably the strongest line of the evening: "Your government has spent the past year and a half in denial". (To which Busuttil, it must be said, had no answer to give.)

But ultimately, Louis Grech was on far safer and more comfortable territory when he tried to strike a more conciliatory tone. Viewers of either political hue will no doubt have sympathised with his claim that people are simply fed up with divisive, confrontational politics. Many would have also welcomed his appeal for greater impartiality in our general approach to such matters: it cannot be, he argued, that we still cling to the old view that "everything one side does is automatically right", and vice versa.

And even if his delivery was not quite up to the word-perfect standard of Busuttil, the total upshot was that Grech did come across as the more sincere of the two speakers yesterday.

But sincerity, on its own, is no substitute for clarity of vision. And neither provided this yesterday. Matters came to a head when Bugeja paused the programme to allow AD's Carmel Cacopardo to ask a couple of generic questions. Again, these were nothing if not direct: what is either party's policy of drug decriminalisation, and illegal construction of the Armier variety (to name but two)?

Neither question received an answer. The part about drugs was simply ignored by both sides; and when it came to Armier, Busuttil seemed to supply two totally conflicting answers at once. He started by insisting that ALL illegal buildings must be removed... yet immediately qualified that with an argument that can be translated from Newspeak as 'some illegal buildings are more equal than others'... only without making it clear precisely on what grounds (all he would say is 'it depends on the circumstances').

Ultimately, however, what we were left with was what both deputy leaders claimed they would remove from their parties' rhetoric: buzzwords and empty catchphrases, or as Louis Grech repeatedly put it ... 'more of the same'.