Abortion and cannabis: Grech’s farewell to big-tent politics?

Surveys consistently show that the abstention rate in Malta is highest among tertiary-educated, young voters – that same category which in the past endured the PN’s paleo-conservatism in the name of realising Malta’s European dream – accession to the EU.

Today, tertiary-educated and young voters are also the most likely to support some form of liberalisation of Malta’s draconian abortion laws. And indeed, only a few days ago it seemed that PN leader Bernard Grech had found a winning formula to keep on board three categories of PN-leaning voters: the ‘enlightened’ conservatives, who oppose abortion and legalisation of cannabis but can have an open conversation with their liberal children; middle of the road voters with misgivings on these reforms but who shun fundamentalism; and liberals who aspire to the European mainstream.

Grech took a courageous stance against the online vilification of PN candidate Emma Portelli Bonnici, who was branded a “satanist, murderer and butcher” by a hysterical priest for expressing pro-choice views, despite having never questioned her party’s stance against abortion. Before that, he had even declared that an upcoming bill on cannabis should tackle the way people purchase the plant through legal means, hinting that he could be in favour of some form of legalisation.

At that stage it looked like Grech had struck a balance. Having first played a part in the anti-divorce campaign in 2011, he offered conservatives a ‘guarantee’ that the party’s stance against legal abortion would not change with him at the helm. But he still kept himself in a position to open his party to people of different values, without alienating reasonable conservative voices. In short, Grech could be the epitome of the ‘enlightened conservative’, someone capable of engaging with his own party’s social liberal voters who are ready for a change in government, but who resent the PN’s conservatism.

This balance was further reflected in the party’s advocacy of free contraception, including the non-abortive but still maligned morning-after pill – it looked like this inclusive approach could have closed the abortion debate in the PN, for the time being.

But while the party’s historical opposition to abortion is in synch with the majority of the country, more so in the PN, the categorical exclusion of internal debate has rubbed off wrongly on a category of society that dislikes fundamentalism and demonisation, especially at a time when women in Malta are speaking up against patriarchal oppression. On cannabis, the risks of a conservative position may be even greater, with a larger number of young people supporting the reform.

The conservative backlash

So just one week after defending Portelli Bonnici, it was Grech who sent a chilling message to liberals in a six-minute tirade on PN radio station Net FM, no doubt under pressure of his party’s ultra conservative wing. “No one, and I repeat, no one who is in favour of abortion will represent or form part of the party as long as I am the leader. Not in the past, not now and not in the future.”

Such an unnecessary statement did not leave much room for interpretation. It did not simply reaffirm the PN’s legitimate position against abortion, but suggested that party candidates or activists who hold pro-choice views have no place in the party. Judging from declarations by Emma Portelli Bonnici a day later – namely that she “remains a candidate, fully aware of the party’s current statute” and with no intention of changing the statute, it seems Grech is really expecting pro-choice candidates to refrain from speaking on this issue. A

Thankfully, Portelli Bonnici still is intent on contest with the PN. But Grech’s ominous declaration that “no one in favour of abortion will represent or form part of the party”, coincides with renewed calls for her expulsion by one arch-conservative, former PN candidate. It’s a situation that leaves pro-choice candidates under probation by the emboldened zealots who distrust Grech.

And this kind of ambiguity and muddled thinking risks alienating conservatives and liberals alike, making Grech less of a transformational leader who can renew the PN as a big-tent party of liberals, conservatives and M.O.R. voters, and more like a clumsy D.I.Y. guy always fixing leaks in a broken house.

And if that conservative backlash was not enough, it continued on Friday when the PN parliamentary group warned that the proposed cannabis reform will “normalise drug use”.

It’s a strategy that comes with a great political risk. Candidates like Portelli Bonnici are breath of fresh air in the PN, and they remain on board with a peg to their noise to fight an “ineffective and corrupt government”. But liberal voters are told that their votes are not even required in a scenario where Labour is more tolerant of debate on abortion. So on cannabis, liberals and cannabis users could fear that a future PN government will withdraw the reform, effectively encouraging them to vote Labour.

The PN’s desperate search for a battle-cry

This bolt from the blue comes in a political scenario bereft of life-defining issues – like democracy in the 1980s and EU membership in the 1990s and early noughties. The difficulty of reconciling conservatives and liberals in the absence of any overriding battle-cry has plagued the PN since 2004. Even back in 2006, an attempt to entrench the ban on abortion in the constitution by Tonio Borg was opposed by the party’s intelligentsia the likes of Ranier Fsadni, Peter Serracino Inglott and Joe Friggieri.

Since then the PN has reluctantly conceded to liberal demands on LGBTIQ issues amongst others. But abortion is seen by the party’s conservative elements as a last bastion against creeping liberalism, a mark of Maltese exceptionalism in a heathen Europe.

Grech might have offered conservatives a carrot in return for support on cannabis liberalisation, which probably has a greater bearing on voters’ choices. If that was the case, his strategy failed miserably and, in the process, may have alienated more than one category of voters.

Further complicating the issue is factional rivalry. Abortion was put on the backburner by Simon Busuttil when he accepted the maverick candidacy of the pro-choice Salvu Mallia in the name of the battle against corruption; under Adrian Delia, the party projected abortion as the party’s raison d’etre in MEP elections in 2019, a step which grossly misfired. And it was under Delia that the party approved a statute which affirms the party’s belief in protecting ‘life from conception’, an ultra-conservative position formerly opposed by ideologues like Peter Serracino Inglott, who went on record saying “there is no person before 14 days pass from fertilisation because, by way of example, it is still possible for twins to emerge.”

Despite its shrinking vote, the PN still remains a big-tent party which includes a social liberal minority. Yet Grech risks demotivating them by bowing to pressure from arch-conservatives whose ultimate aim seems that of cleansing the party from liberal elements they consider alien, ignoring the party’s evolution from a right-wing traditionalist party akin to Franco’s Falange (as the PN was till the 1970s), to a modern European people’s party which championed EU membership.

Daphne Caruana Galizia, who best represents the psyche of the liberal PN-leaning voter, was categorical in her pro-choice stance, describing the purpose of Malta’s ban on abortion as a “purely symbolic” affirmation of “what we stand for” and an attempt “to stop poor people, and women who are financially dependent on uncooperative third parties, from having one.” Contrast this to Grech’s inane comparison between protecting turtle eggs and newly conceived babies.

And here lies Bernard Grech’s other political mistake: that of anchoring the stance against legal abortion in a presumed Christian-democratic identity, which is all too revealing of his fudged ideological bearings. For it was under Angela Merkel, the EPP’s most respected global leader, that Germany removed a Nazi-era ban on doctors advertising their abortion services. In Ireland it was Leo Varadkar’s Fine Gael – a member of the EPP – which introduced full abortion rights in the first trimester. In reality it’s ultra-conservative parties in Poland and Hungary, now shunned by the EPP, who are most vocal against abortion rights.

Grech knows that the way forward for the PN is an inclusive vision of a fair and modern society, which keeps enlightened conservatives and liberals on board.

But to get there he has to stop accommodating the fundamentalist right-wing. And if he wants the media to stop talking about mishaps in his party, he should avoid stoking the flames of culture wars, which put the coalition he should be building, at risk.