A zookeeper’s rants skews Labour’s optics...

Turn the clock back to 2013. It was a time of hope and change. For the first time since the 1970s Labour’s reformist optics looked good across a wide spectrum of society. An alliance of the liberal middle class and the working class was swept to power with an unprecedented majority on a platform, which touched on animal rights, liberalisation of drug laws, gay rights and a vague hope of national renewal; incarnated in a promised second republic.

Sure enough for those who delved deeper, the contradictions were all there from the very beginning. Tell-tale signs of ‘migration football’, to intimacy with developers, preceded Joseph Muscat’s ascent to power. But these aspects were obscured by the optics of aspirational politics. Cool Malta was on the horizon and Muscat was the towering leader of a coalition whose inclusivity kept moderates on board but the agenda had a progressive continental edge.

And indeed a lot of things have changed in 2013. From LGBTIQ laggard Malta  became a global leader, setting the pace for other more advanced countries. In a token to animal lovers and a balancing act with a pro-hunting stance, circuses were banned. Yet as months rolled on, it became evident that there was much more than met the eye. The first months of Labour government represented a policy onslaught as goalposts were moved to satisfy not just the select few, as had already happened under the PN, but a critical mass of big and medium-sized developers, hoteliers, restaurant owners and even zoo owners. For the Planning Authority’s new rural policy turned previously illegal zoos into a legitimate rural activity apart from making it possible for the PA to use its magic wand to turn countryside ruins in to villas.

Sure enough, circuses, which involved the transport of wild animals over long distances, were an easier target than menageries hosting birthday parties for young kids. But the logic of commodification of wild animals is the same. Add animal petting to the equation and zoos increasingly resemble circuses… minus the painful transport of chained animals. But this also came at a greater environmental impact as blatant illegalities outside the development zones became sanctionable.

The great and good of Labour get caught smiling inside Cutajar’s promotional photos on Facebook, from left to right, transport minister Ian Borg, tourism minister Clayton Bartolo, and the Labour MEP Alex Agius Saliba

Poachers and gamekeepers

Coupled with this was a pandering to hunters and immigrant-bashers. In this way, Labour morphed into a strange coalition of rednecks and liberals. Pesky environmentalists were the first to be booted out of the movement. But by honouring other pledges and keeping the social peace through mild social policies, Labour gained the trust of a segment of the liberal middle-class. Moreover, Labour also improved living standards after a decade of stagnation and austerity, keeping the working classes on board even if it refrained from taxing profits to redistribute wealth. People were freer and richer even if entire communities like Pembroke were sacrificed on the altar of the super-rich who wanted cheap public land for their profit. Still, the model was electorally successful. Labour made inroads among the aspirational middle class while making even bigger inroads in rural Malta and Gozo.

One major characteristics of the Muscat era was turning poachers into gamekeepers, a legacy continued by Abela who has allocated land at Mizieb and l-Ahrax to be managed by the hunters’ federation. This was also the case with planning policies being written either by committees that included operators like hoteliers or practicing architects with a track record of finding loopholes in ODZ regulations. Only this week, the logic resurfaced in a bizarre suggestion by Robert Musumeci, a soft-spoken, former Nationalist mayor, and bête noire of environmentalists before 2013, himself an incarnation of Muscat’s movement as the embodiment of pro-business moderates. In the wake of a crazy rant by avowed Labourite zookeeper Anton Cutajar, targeting animal commissioner Alison Bezzina for questioning the ethics of zoos, Musumeci proposed appointing the zookeeper as her deputy simply because they both “love animals” - an unthinkable balancing act attempting to keep everyone happy by overlooking the contradictions emerging in Labour’s hegemonic block.

A rant too far

Yet at that stage the damage to Labour’s optics was already too great for Labour not to distance itself from Cutajar. For unlike less outspoken developers, Anton Cutajar had broken one major rule: that of externalising his threat to use his political connections to put pressure on a public official on the social media. “I am telling you right here, if you keep it up, I will send letters to who I need to send them, and your time as commissioner will be up,” Cutajar said in a Facebook livestream.

Moreover his attack was targeting a public official who best incarnates the promise of 2013: a young, principled dynamic woman threatened by an aggressive, male zookeeper. The optics were too bad for Lydia Abela, the PM’s wife and an animal rights advocate in her own right, not to reprimand Cutajar. At that stage Cutajar had no choice but to remove his offensive post and partly retract, expressing a willingness to work with the commissioner.

One may say that Cutajar himself is an easy target simply because his threat to Bezzina was too blatant to be ignored, unlike more sophisticated lobbyists who get what they want without ever exposing themselves and damaging the political optics of those who favour them. Yet Cutajar himself may have been led to believe that he is powerful. For not only was his ‘zoo’ regularised in 2017 but he has now applied to sanction illegal extensions which include a sizeable dwelling with pool. And even his protests on proposed regulations banning the petting of wild animals found a listening ear, being mysteriously removed from a draft law issued for public consultation.

Yet Cutajar does not play by the rules. Notice the contrast with MDA president Sandro Chetcuti, whose public pronouncements on environmental protection contrast with his own lobby’s daily actions and demands. In this sense Cutajar’s outbursts have an authenticity which exposes the fault lines of Labour’s increasingly unwieldy but still effective coalition.

Essential friends: Anton Cutajar with the obligatory ‘Labour’ friend shot with former PM Joseph Muscat

From movement to skip?

One risks making too many generalisations from this bizarre tale pitting an angry male zookeeper known for his retrograde views on migration (he even picketed a Black Lives Matter protest in remembrance of murder victim Lassane Cisse) against a young, non-partisan woman appointed by a Labour government, who in many ways incarnates the spirit of a forward looking cosmopolitan and liberal country. But it comes at a critical juncture where Robert Abela is keen on reinvigorating the ‘coalition’ after it was dealt a devastating blow by last year’s meltdown of the Muscat administration under a dark cloud of corruption and impunity.

While electorally Labour has held its super-majority in the polls, its moral authority has been undermined in a way which may make it easier for a renewed Nationalist party to rebrand itself under a new leader who seems keen on modernising his party.

In a sign of the danger posed by outbursts like those of Cutajar, Bernard Grech himself has shown tact by immediately expressing solidarity with Bezzina, aided by Cutajar’s own tribalist pigeon-holing of the animal rights commissioner, the independent media and animal rights activists with the “anti-Labour crowd” whom he regularly accuses of lashing out against him because of his “political DNA”.

Abela has so far sent mixed messages, keeping the populist right-wing on board by pushing the “full up” narrative on migration, but showing greater disposition to redress the environmental deficit and take small but significant steps at removing impunity for the protagonists of Panamagate. Yet Labour has its dissonant discordant voices, ranging from Schembri loyalists to xenophobes who distort its media optics. Whether Abela can resurrect his movement’s ‘inclusivity’ dream ticket from 2013 remains to be seen. The risk is that without clear ideological boundaries demarcating it from the loony right which has its own roots inside Labour, Abela’s party may end up being seen as a skip instead of a movement with a vision of a modern dynamic nation.