Looking Back 2023: After the feelgood era, costly U-turns

For Robert Abela, the prime minister whose style of decision-making can often venture into tricky waters, 2023 was a big reminder of the power of the people. 

It has not been the first time a sitting prime minister has had to curtail plans and policies in the face of massive protest and public outrage. Joseph Muscat had faced one of the largest environmental demonstrations ever when he announced he would be hiving part of l-Inwadar in Marsaskala for a controversial university project. 

Abela too, in his long hot summer of 2023, was faced with a trifecta of political debacles: the long fall-out from the Muscat legacy due to the Vitals-Steward privatisation fiasco and major allegations of fraud and corruption, but then also the Sofia inquiry vote, and nationwide blackouts exposing weakness in Malta’s electricity distribution system.  

It was not the first time the electorate had to endure political U-turns, but the bad optics and infrastructural challenges have soured Labour’s electoral soup in the run-up to the European elections in 2024. The refusal to back a public inquiry until Abela caved in under popular outrage, severed an emotional cord with the administration. 

2023 shows that U-turns, be they a judicious climbdown from obdurate positions, cynical strategy, or simply lack of mugsy, risk exposing a feeble backbone. 

The Sofia inquiry 

Abela had been categorical about refusing the PN’s call for a public inquiry into construction deaths, parallel to the Kordin magisterial inquiry. With a campaign spearheaded by the grieving mother of Jean Paul Sofia, his obdurate position was crowned by his parliamentary group voting against the PN motion for the inquiry. But the image of the Sofia family railing at the Labour MPs from the Strangers Gallery became an enduring image of justified rage, prompting national opprobrium for Labour. 

Suffering the consternation of a wide part of the electorate, Abela appeared careless as he was snapped ploughing out of his troubled Maltese waters for his Ragusan weekender – with a baseball cap in reverse and dressed in holiday mode – on his swanky Azimut 50 yacht, an image of wealth that smacked of disdain for an enraged public. 

The tide turned almost immediately, with Abela meeting Sofia’s mother to announce the public inquiry as a vigil for Sofia to be attended by thousands outside Castille beckoned. 

The PM then seemed to have torn the political playbook even when, the same evening of announcing the public inquiry, he exited Castille an hour after the Sofia vigil had come to an end, only to be booed by the stragglers leaving the protest. The partisan haters took the bait, but then, no prime minister should ever allow himself to be willingly humiliated in public... 

A week later: the blackout crisis – an unprecedented week-long saga of power cuts brought about by faulty underground cables, overheating and the new ‘abnormal’ from the planetary climate crisis. Next in line, a potential milk shortage due to power cuts at the Malta Dairy Products plant (and the summer heat naturally affecting cow milk production). 

Abortion 

Abela’s previous decisions are what seem to eat into the foundations on which he could otherwise build a stronger legacy. In what had to be Labour’s most radical innovation in its historical record of upholding civil liberties, the administration announced Bill 28, a law to allow doctors to effect terminations on women when pregnancy is endangering their health and life. The law traced its roots to the case of Andrea Prudente, an American tourist who was forced to transfer to Spain after needing an abortion while on holiday in Malta. Prudente started miscarrying and despite being told by doctors her pregnancy was not viable was denied an abortion. 

Back in November 2022 when the Second Reading stage of Bill 28 started in parliament, Abela and several other Labour MPs made a whole-hearted defence of the proposed amendment, especially the aspect that spoke of protecting women’s health. 

The underpinning argument was that Prudente and women in her predicament should never be allowed to reach a stage where their life is put at risk before doctors could intervene. 

But seven months down the line government backtracked on its core principle to protect women’s health, despite the rhetoric saying otherwise. The revised wording of Bill 28, which became law in 2023, will not solve the dilemma created in the Prudente case – consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist Mark Sant had said. 

Public defence of MPs, before acting 

Reacting to public backlash, Abela was forced to act on MP Rosianne Cutajar over her relationship with magnate Yorgen Fenech (accused of masterminding the Caruana Galizia assassination) at a time when the MP was suspected of secretly benefiting from the Tumas CEO’s largesse. 

Even when found guilty of an ethics breach by the Standards Commissioner over the Mdina property sale, Cutajar was allowed to contest the 2022 elections on the Labour ticket. 

But it was only in 2023 after her private WhatsApp chats with Fenech were produced in a defamation lawsuit against Mark Camilleri that her position became untenable. Only two weeks before, Abela was defending Cutajar, to the extent of calling the publication of the WhatsApp chats, “misogynistic”, and arguing that the MP had already shouldered political responsibility when she resigned as Parliamentary Secretary in 2021. Abela seemed to now think that the MP’s infamous “pigging-out” comment in the chats merited the MP’s expulsion because of the public backlash against her sense of entitlement. 

Dented brand 

Abela’s Labour is a scuffed and dented brand. How it responds to the PN in 2024, now that it is taking a leaf from the far-right manual to use population pressures – and discontent at non-EU migration to Malta – as its European election springboard, will speak volumes of where its heart truly lies.