Election 2013 analysis | Chronicle of a defeat foretold

All public opinion polls conducted by MaltaToday as far back as September 2008 only six months after Gonzi's victory in the 2008 general election, foretold the PN's disastrous result in last week's election.

So did the results of the two electoral appointments of the legislature; the MEP election in June 2009 and local elections in March 2012.

In some ways Simon Busuttil was correct when he declared that the election had already been lost by the time he was appointed deputy leader.

But this admission raises two pertinent questions: what did the party's leadership do to stop the haemorrhage both before and during the electoral campaign? Did the PN misread or ignore the signs of the times?

Moreover, with the economy performing relatively well, the scale of defeat can only be explained by widespread discontentment at the way Gonzi governed the country. Probably it was actions in the first three years of the legislature which eroded his trust ratings and made it impossible for the PN to recover under Gonzi's leadership.

The list of issues, which eroded his trust, included his poor handling of the honoraria issue, the Arriva debacle (which turned a courageous reform in to a series of blunders), Gonzi's failure to sniff out the public mood during the divorce referendum and the government's poor track record on energy issues, which left the country dependent on oil. 

On top of it all, the government's propaganda - right up to the eve of the general election - relied on its divisive shenanigans in the media, whose agenda seemed to naturally coincide with that of the Gonzi administration. 

This clearly backfired as it gave the government a semblance of an ingrained regime, with some former Nationalist voters recoiling at the clear bias on public broadcasting.

This ironically put Labour at the advantage, for even legitimate questions on its various policy deficits came to be perceived as an apology for the powers that be. 

The writing on the wall

Polls as far back as September 2008-six months after the 2008 PN victory show that a segment of Nationalist voters were warming up to Joseph Muscat's new Labour Party.

The first trust barometer of the legislature showed the new Labour leader enjoying a 13-point lead over Lawrence Gonzi.

This simply confirms the perception that the only factor which prevented change from happening in 2008 was Alfred Sant's unfortunate baggage. This poll result indicates that a segment of PN voters was well disposed for change at the very moment the PL elected a new leader.

But it was only subsequent events which solidified this disposition.

MaltaToday's first electoral survey, conducted a year later, showed that 15% of PN voters in 2008 already had the intention of voting Labour in September 2009.

A haemorrhage of between 10% and 15% of former PN voters migrating to Labour was confirmed in subsequent surveys conducted between 2009 and 2013.

Moreover, the PL won a vast majority of 55% in the two electoral appointments of the legislature, the 2009 MEP elections and the 2012 local elections. On both occasions, the PL enjoyed a 14-point lead. 

The PN was also on the losing side of the divorce referendum, which was won by the yes camp by 53%.

Back to 2008

One may well argue that the roots of last week's electoral trouncing could be traced back to the 2008 result - a narrow relative majority of 1,500 votes which translated into a one-seat majority.

The election clearly showed that the PN's second 10-year cycle in government had ended and the PN had only won due to distrust of Opposition leader Alfred Sant. In fact, in all surveys preceding the 2008 electoral campaign, the PN was trailing Labour while Gonzi emerged as the most trusted leader. It was only in the final two weeks of the campaign that MaltaToday's polls correctly showed the PN at an advantage over Labour.

This confirms the perception that after 2008, Gonzi was simply living on borrowed time lent to him by an electorate which had just stopped short of electing the Labour Party simply because of its leader's political baggage.

Still, the electoral victory, however small, gave Gonzi the dangerous impression that he could ride roughshod over dissents in his own party - an attitude which allowed internal problems to fester up to a point of no return. This arrogant streak was based on the perception that the PN had only won thanks to Gonzi. 

It also led Gonzi to ignore individual candidates who, for all their shortcomings, had benefited from the party's deliberate decision to shift the focus from the party's front bench. 

This strategy strengthened MPs like Franco Debono, Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando and Robert Arrigo while weakening that of established ministers like Louis Galea. 

Accommodating the inflated egos of some of these MPs would have certainly further weakened and humiliated Gonzi. But in the end Gonzi was paying the cost of living on the borrowed time he acquired thanks to the GonziPn stratagem.  Moreover after allowing disgruntlement on his parliamentary bench fester for years, he embarked on delaying tactics instead of taking the country back to the polls, once it was clear that he had lost his majority in parliament. Little did Gonzi realise that by buying time, he was simply digging his own political grave.

Gonzi's only significant recognition of the election result was the appointment of former President George Abela as President - a decision which had been contrasted within the party by Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando.

Having won on the GonziPN platform, which eclipsed his front-bench of Ministers, Gonzi may well have come to the conclusion that the party owed its victory to his leadership qualities. He may well have misinterpreted the result as a personal investiture and a clear electoral mandate for a decisive government.

Initially, this encouraged a positive decisive streak in his government displayed in the reform rent laws, the privatisation of the money-draining dockyard and the decision to stand firm against monopolies in public transport following an unpopular wild cat strike. 

But the top-down approach to transport reform taken by his loyal lieutenant Austin Gatt backfired, tarnishing what could well have been a hallmark of a reform-minded administration. Unfortunately, the reform was drafted on paper in the absence of consideration for the everyday realities of commuters and addressing the congestion problem.

One has to recognise that over the past few years, Gonzi distinguished himself both on the economic front by his handling of global financial crisis - which saw Malta thriving when all its neighbours suffered - and by affirming himself as a statesman during the Libyan crisis.

But the self congratulatory attitude on both issues could well have further distanced him from a more inward-looking, traditionally Nationalist electorate which was more preoccupied by its sectoral interests or by bread-and-butter issues.

Perversely, even his positive commitment in the 2008 election to reform MEPA and address the environmental deficit came back to haunt him. 

On one hand, he was unable to satisfy contradictory promises he himself made to lobbies like the Armier squatters and environmentalists alike. But neither could he allow MEPA to continue with its free for all attitude towards building development.  Absent from his second term were grandiose and controversial ideas like mega developments, golf courses and artificial islands.

But he went half way, leaving everyone disappointed.

Moreover, this new attitude created a class of businessmen who resented being excluded from the clique, simply because they had been alienated by stricter land use policies. 

This sentiment amplified by the perceived preferential treatment given to acolytes like Nazzareno Vassallo, especially when the 'reformed' MEPA approved his application for a supermarket in a record time, a few weeks before the general election.

Gonzi's sense of self-importance may well have led him to underestimate the strength of his opponent who, contrary to the prime minister, made it his mission to enchant all possible categories - including building contractors, Armier squatters and the hunting lobby - who helped determine the scale of Labour's majority in the election.

In some ways, Gonzi was himself the victim of the Nationalist way of governing since 1987; which was based on the ability to operate a patronage system, which included as many people as possible. 

He may well have underestimated the rapidity through which those who felt excluded from the 'clique' for both legitimate and illegitimate reasons, would jump on the winning cart.  

Symptomatic of this was Gonzi's constant complaints during the electoral campaign that his party had been outspent by the Labour Party. 

Still, he had no one else but himself to blame for not pushing through parliament a bill regulating party financing. 

This symbolises Gonzi's schizophrenic approach to politics, conditioned by a late response to civil society's demand for higher ethical standards on issues like building permits and an unwillingness to embark on a wholesome reforms of Maltese democracy.

By 2013 the chickens had come back home to roost.

Labour's pact with Armier squatters and hunters on the eve of the 2013 election crown Gonzi's failure to choose between a new modern way of doing politics and the old ways of doing politics he had inherited from the  Eddie Fenech Adami era. 

But unlike Fenech Adami, Gonzi lacked an over-riding national issue like EU membership which kept all the other issues at bay. Neither did Fenech Adami face the kind of media scrutiny faced by Gonzi.

Message ignored

Surely Gonzi always acknowledged his difficulty in listening to voters' concerns but he seemed lost on what to do after "listening". 

Gonzi had described the trouncing of the party in the June 2009 elections as one holding "important significance" for the government.

The government, he said, needed to be more sensitive to what people were feeling. Moreover, the result of the European Parliament elections was linked to the "harsh" reforms that the government had introduced in the first year of legislature, including the increased water and electricity tariffs.

Still, Gonzi found himself helpless on this front, for the government's energy decisions were conditioned by the shortcomings of the first Gonzi legislature between 2004 and 2008, which failed on two fronts: that of embarking on gas pipeline and that of encouraging the use of renewable energy. 

Revealingly, after 2009, Gonzi made a distinction between the message sent by the electorate in MEP elections and general elections, which hints that he failed to grasp the scale of disenchantment in the country. 

"The electorate is becoming more mature as time goes by and this is a good sign for the country," he said, adding that people were making a clear distinction between general and local elections and taking decisions on whom to vote for according to the election.

Lawrence Gonzi's greatest failure to listen to the electorate was his vote in parliament against the introduction of divorce following the divorce referendum.  This single non-consequential decision which had no bearing on the actual passage of the bill, could have well sealed the vote of thousands of younger and liberal voters. 

Reacting to a similar trouncing in local election in 2012, Gonzi once again promised to listen to the message sent by voters.

"The message to us all is that we need to hear what families are telling us," Gonzi said. "We need to be closer to the people than we have been so far."

He also acknowledged that it was not enough to work hard for the country in general by attracting investment and creating jobs. The people also expected action at the lower level, to help families. It was good to defend the country but that had to be translated into better conditions for families, Gonzi said.

But once again Gonzi seemed to ignore the fact that these elections indicated a clear shift towards Labour.

In his reaction he highlighted the fact that these elections registered the highest ever abstention rate since local councils were created. He also noted that the sharpest drop in turnout was in those localities which traditionally supported the PN.

According to Gonzi this was another message to the PN, a call by the electorate for the party to listen to the people, and also explain its policies better.

Too little too late

Gonzi's answer to the PN's problems was an elaborate chess move which saw Simon Busuttil first being anointed as Gonzi's envoy to civil society and finally elected as the party's new deputy leader.

Clearly, at that stage the intention was to use Busuttil as a prop for an embattled leadership of a party, which had already lost the grace of the electorate. 

Busuttil bravely took the plunge in the party's hour of need, winning over the experienced Tonio Fenech whose candidacy gave Busuttil's election a degree of legitimacy.

Both Busuttil and Gonzi probably hoped that they could reverse the tide at such a late stage, most likely in the hope that non-voters and the nominally undecided could be charmed back in to the party.

Upon being elected, the same Busuttil who now says that the die had been cast long before his election as deputy leader, appealed to the party councilors to "strongly believe that together the PN can win again the next general election".

But ultimately, both Gonzi and Busuttil failed miserably in the task, being overtaken by the unfolding of the oil procurement scandal which probably blocked any last desperate attempt by the PN to recover lost voters.

Busuttil's hopes were also dashed by Muscat's bold and ruthless decision to shed his own deputy leader and ultimately by his own "wicc ta' Nazzjonalist" gaffe which gave credence to Labour's "taghna lkoll" mantra.

In the end Gonzi's decision to prolong the agony by a further two months of campaigning, after a year of political instability, simply served to reinforce a decision which the electorate had taken much before.

All public opinion polls conducted by MaltaToday as far back as September 2008 only six months after Gonzi's victory in the 2008 general election, foretold the PN's disastrous result in last week's election.

So did the results of the two electoral appointments of the legislature; the MEP election in June 2009 and local elections in March 2012.

In some ways Simon Busuttil was correct when he declared that the election had already been lost by the time he was appointed deputy leader.

But this admission raises two pertinent questions: what did the party's leadership do to stop the haemorrhage both before and during the electoral campaign? Did the PN misread or ignore the signs of the times?

Moreover, with the economy performing relatively well, the scale of defeat can only be explained by widespread discontentment at the way Gonzi governed the country. Probably it was actions in the first three years of the legislature which eroded his trust ratings and made it impossible for the PN to recover under Gonzi's leadership.

The list of issues, which eroded his trust, included his poor handling of the honoraria issue, the Arriva debacle (which turned a courageous reform in to a series of blunders), Gonzi's failure to sniff out the public mood during the divorce referendum and the government's poor track record on energy issues, which left the country dependent on oil. 

On top of it all, the government's propaganda - right up to the eve of the general election - relied on its divisive shenanigans in the media, whose agenda seemed to naturally coincide with that of the Gonzi administration. 

This clearly backfired as it gave the government a semblance of an ingrained regime, with some former Nationalist voters recoiling at the clear bias on public broadcasting.

This ironically put Labour at the advantage, for even legitimate questions on its various policy deficits came to be perceived as an apology for the powers that be.