[ANALYSIS] Showcase over, let’s see the beef

Lawrence Gonzi is no doubt worrying how the last act of the great big drama that sees him going to the polls will be played out. The 59-year-old Prime Minister has spent almost twelve months harangued by an unruly backbencher, the settling of old scores, and witnessing the implosion of the GonziPN strategy which won him the 2008 election by the narrowest of margins.

Gonzi has never commanded an absolute majority of some form, if you discount his leadership 'race' this year where he was the sole runner. Since becoming prime minister in 2004 after being elected PN leader and taking Eddie Fenech Adami's role, his party was re-elected by a relative majority and since then Labour commands 38 councils out of 68, and also won two rounds of European elections.

With Gonzi's one-seat majority now lost, there is a feeling inside the party that Gonzi has run out of options, especially with the Franco Debono bogeyman always serving as a reminder that somewhere along the line, the party leadership has lost the plot.

It was this sense of exhaustion that seemed to dampened the triumphalism of the PN's annual commemoration of Independence.

At the other end of the island, Labour showcase the ideological shift taking place inside it.

Although MaltaToday surveys indicate that the majority of university-educated voters (33.3%) will vote for the Nationalists as against the 14% who will chose Labour, Joseph Muscat is straddling a peculiar divide: he values middle-class liberals who stress the importance of individual rights, the environment and cultural openness, but he also retains a hawkish stance on immigration (which did not feature anywhere in the Labour congress).

This is where he plays to the communitarian vote, people who feel a greater obligation to someone in Siggiewi than Somalia (at the extreme they are racist), are green where it comes to environmental health only but are unromantic about the countryside or art nouveau architecture and view construction as a right and key to personal wealth.

Connecting these two apparently disparate groups are bread and butter issues like jobs and diminishing incomes, price and energy inflation - top concerns featuring in all party surveys.

Under pain of Brussels's excessive deficit procedure, Gonzi presents the last budget before the elections in an apparent straitjacket - unless he delivers tax cuts whose bill will have to be collected by Labour in 2013. Muscat promises a reduction in energy tariffs while at the same berating Enemalta's €600 million debt. While Gonzi extols his navigational skills during the financial storm, Muscat cosies up to the business class: it was at this intersection that the parties met with their showcase of political values.

Identity crisis

The Nationalists are confused about their political destiny. The spent force of Eddie Fenech Adami's jet-propelled voyage into Europe is now visible in the contrails of Lawrence Gonzi's social conservatism. Gonzi's leadership may have ensured continuity from Fenech Adami, but in the brave, new, liberal world of European Malta, he appears ill-equipped to match Joseph Muscat's jamboree of 'progressives and moderates'.

The prime minister who is seeking re-election is the same one who refused to concede the democratic majority in 2011's referendum a sign of goodwill by voting for divorce in parliament. His inability to consider gay marriage or civil unions as a possibility under a Nationalist government has shuttered him off to the young, gay vote. Shall we add insult to injury, when he described the cohabitation bill's raison d'être as a legal remedy for unmarried parents unrecognised by the courts - contrary to a legislative effort at formalising homosexual, as well as unmarried heterosexual relationships?

Don't be fooled. This identity crisis is not the Nationalists's alone, with neither party still truly recognising that it has one. Labour agonises over sounding too leftie or alienating business and the self-employed with its historical legacy.

Not only: it also abandons class discourse, with Joseph Muscat summing up his new Labour as no longer 'the workers' party' but 'the party of work' - a broad alliance uniting unskilled workers right up to professionals and entrepreneurs and the owners of the means of production, in a daily ritual to "provide for their families". He talks of a new middle class, and sells this aspiration as something he has already partaken of: humble origins, hardworking agrarian parents, the first of the family to reach the dizzy heights of university education.

Class-consciousness may have never been a Maltese peculiarity in the first place. We're more likely to consider ourselves Labourites or Nationalists before propping ourselves as 'working class' or 'middle class'. Even the working class has a strong entrepreneurial streak. This is why Muscat's workerism will sell: we are all workers and consumers. More than that, he cannot be accused of being business-unfriendly.

But he should be warned. When he told unions their demand for a raise in the national minimum wage would only make businesses raise their costs and demand more productivity from employees (and the General Workers Union bowed in deference) he was also speaking in full knowledge that 15.1% of the Maltese (61,000) are below the at-risk-of-poverty threshold, with incomes well below €10,000.

The Labour leader believes reducing energy tariffs is key to offer respite for low-income workers and crucial to revitalise businesses. If businesses are 'left to work', and we still don't know the full ramifications of this new Labour mantra, economic growth will follow and everybody stands to benefit.

This belief in trickledown has its limits. Alternattiva Demokratika pointed out that Muscat's bid to reduce energy tariffs would mean using tax money to subsidise high-income earners who will consume and waste more cheap energy. Clearly, reducing energy tariffs will come at a cost to the exchequer, especially for the debt-ridden Enemalta.

So at some point after the whole roadshow is over, Muscat has to talk about redistribution. Will he ignore the reality of inequality in Malta and hope that reduced energy tariffs will placate poor and low-income families? Or will he knock on the door of the small percentile of big business and tax windfall profits?

Placid hues, placid tones

On to the reinvented aesthetic then.

Labour are setting the political pantone. Out with the blood red, in with multi-coloured hues, or the soothing blue backgrounds that were draped in the Congress tents, themed by names from the socialist pantheon. The radical colour scheme means the Nationalists must start experimenting with green if they want to appear renewed.

The Nilde Iotti tent (communist, first female Speaker of the Italian republic) was a transparent plastic tent with red carpet and lush white cushions and sofas. No debates held here, but casual meetings with MPs. The Brandt, Mitterand and Roosevelt tents housed the debates, an homage to the international credentials of socialism but little beyond this namedropping marketing.

The show of hands approving Muscat's guidelines for Labour's upcoming manifesto were supposed to give the impression of an impromptu plebiscite. But the tone of the meetings was set long before by the introductory speakers. Muscat's propositions for guidelines to inspire the party manifesto were not the result of divergent current - this is strategy.

Letting business work, realistic energy policies, public-private partnerships in health and stronger primary healthcare, a free society and open government, or a better standard of living are hallmarks for any serious government. It is hard to accuse the Nationalist government of ignoring these core tenets.

But with its intimate gatherings and opening up, Labour wants the public to understand it is capable of looking, feeling, and delivering like the Nationalists. It's all down to a logistical effort masterminded by Muscat's kitchen Cabinet, a new generation that is no stranger to the affluence of the economy the Nationalists created. As nouveau and entrepreneurial as the new middle class Muscat vows to build, they are attuned to middle-of-the-road sensitivities and aspirational politics and consumer choices. You can glean it from their choice of the placid piano version of David Guetta's Without You as the score to Muscat's every appearance. As inoffensively MOR radio-pap as when the Nationalists opted for Keane's 'Everybody's Changing'. (Incidentally, the PN used 'Without You' while introducing its new candidates on Friday evening at the Granaries - faux pas).

So Muscat jettisons the naffness of the Sant-era party, smoothens the edges of his austere-looking predecessor with his personable ease with the public and social partners, embraces difference and opens up to minorities - welcoming them to a prospective government which recognises them - and proposes himself as an antidote to Gonzi. Labour can do what the Nationalists are doing, and more, is the ultimate message.

Remove the cynical-tinted glasses, and at Floriana you realise that Muscat knows his rival's Achilles' heel.

After decades in power, even the success stories that underpin Nationalist administration cannot hide the internal discord plaguing Lawrence Gonzi as he seeks re-election. The slogans PNedukazzjoni or PNsahha and PNxoghol are correct in according the Nationalist government the merit it deserves on education, health and jobs, but can it hide the reality of Europe's lowest female working population, highest school-leavers, and Mater Dei's bed shortages?

How long can Gonzi continue to deny that the liberal aspirations of the PN's European dream are totally mismatched with his social outlook. Whether his hard-wired brain full of positive statistics and data can convince us to ignore the reality of diminishing disposable income.

Whether he is the Vasco da Gama of financial storms or a Captain Ahab, bedevilled by an elusive majority and his unruly backbench?

GonziPN-PLMuscat

On the Granaries, the Prime Minister sets much store in rekindling the fear of Mintoffianomics and Mintoffianism, State-mandated thuggery and State-controlled economy. But can he ignore how outpaced he has been by Labour on divorce, civil unions and (perhaps) embryo freezing, and how incongruous his reservations sound while rekindling of the days our choice was only limited to locally produced sub-standard chocolate and toothpaste?

And which Gonzi are we to believe on the stewardship of the economy: the one who tells his centre-right counterparts in the European People's Party that he resents the grovelling of European economies to credit rating agencies, when he is the first to rush to his domestic audience to boast of Moody's and the IMF's certification of the Maltese economy?

Are we to laud Gonzi on keeping the deficit below the artificial 3% ceiling (invented by the Germans for their fiscal delight) or should we berate him on the stale bread and butter of our daily living as purchasing power declines?

Gonzi keeps telling his faithful there is no chance of early elections, but going to the polls in 2013 would hardly be an achievement when his government has lost an MP and now has another gone rogue. To ignore the exhaustion of a government led by one of the most embattled, if unwavering, leaders in modern history is turning out to be fatal for the PN. "It's no longer possible - we're no longer together," somebody should tell Gonzi as we cue the build-up for Simon Busuttil as heir-apparent.

Muscat should also take note of his rival's predicament. Gonzi personified his party to win the 2008 election but his leadership was unable to resolve its conflicting ideologies and interests. Muscat adopts a presidential style in proclaiming party policy by relieving his shadow ministers of the job. He offers "a future that unites us" because he runs with the hounds and hunts with the hares in his overtures to business and extends the helping hand of social mobility to build a new middle class. This may well build him a broad church, but will he be overcome by infinite demands for his 'united future'?

Will the economic growth he pledges benefit everyone equally? He can talk about the future and sell the dream (and surely some dreaming never hurt anybody) but once in power the real world will look daunting and he will have to offer only what is possible.

When Labour's electoral manifesto finally sees the light of day, there will be questions to be asked and calculations to be made.

This congress has been a great palate-cleanser. I can truly say that Alfred Sant, the KMB buzzcut, and the taste of Deserta have been totally extinguished. Now let me see the chateaubriand. Rare.

Guide to the Independence and Congress showcase

Buzzwords and slogans

"A future that unites us" was Labour's slogan for its Congress, with Joseph Muscat proposing himself as a prime minister-in-waiting heading a party that can be credible and is ready for government, built upon the success of Nationalist administrations, be safe for business and not make unrealistic pledges.

The Nationalists used Independence as a showcase for their government success on education, health and jobs. Lawrence Gonzi wanted to tell people he is a serious prime minister whose experience can be counted on while Joseph Muscat had been wrong-footed on the economy and politics, looking to win government at all costs.

What the leaders said

Muscat pledged a Labour government for everyone, attempting to blur social divisions by promising a government that cares for everyone: on jobs he promised dignity for everybody, on health he promised quality for everybody, on equality he promised equality equally for everybody... he was a modern social-democrat leftie but on economics he speaks to the right, tells business they can be safe with Labour, and help build his 'new middle class'.

Gonzi had to avoid issues such as his internal discord, his unfulfilled promise of a tax cut for everybody, his half-baked legislation on cohabitation and IVF. Instead he focused on weathering the financial storm and the risk of abstaining and handing Labour victory on a silver plate.

Coups

Big social partner presence at the Labour congress: academics, researchers, NGOs, minority group representatives, teachers and medical professionals were given a voice at Ta' Qali, a sign of Joseph Muscat's outreach campaign. Little going on at Floriana, except for the usual question and answer session for Gonzi which gave the prime minister fodder to extol his government's virtues with his tub-thumping audiences.

However - even though he presides over the government that perfected the art of immigration detention - Gonzi hit out at Muscat over his hazy and hawkish immigration policy, something that Muscat did not discuss at the Congress.

Colours

No deep reds for Labour but a redefined palette - the political pantone - that is now prominent on Joseph Muscat's new website, where he portrays a society of difference in his mantra for a 'future that unites us'. Also, big flirtation with blues, usually associated with business, government, and... the PN. 

Traditional blue and gold star trimmings at the PN's Independence celebrations, where celebrating Independence - decolonisation - is concurrently accompanied by a celebration of European Union accession, now gaining more control on how we spend tax, deficits, and government laws.