This is my 11th general election as both a voter and a media person. The first was in 1971 when, as a teenage reporter struggling to even understand the whole electoral process, I watched history unfold. Malta had been through some turbulent times earlier, following the British government’s decision to brusquely shove the island back to colonial rule after the 1958 riots that took place during the first public calls for independence.
The Sixties had started with an ignominious politico-religious dispute that had families split down the middle, and gone on to the acquisition of, arguably, a funny sort of independence, and the development of new ideas in the fields of culture, literature, economics, the media, fashion and sport as the new generation took on its manifestly shocked predecessors. Change was in the air everywhere in the world and Malta was getting into the act too.
As the 1971, 1976, 1981, 1987, 1992, 1996, 1998, 2003, 2008 and 2013 now mentally flash by as if they have all just been a psychedelic dream, I have been trying to fathom this election campaign we are experiencing. I can honestly say there have been quieter, fiercer, hotter, more, and less, predictable campaigns than this one. What certainly makes the 2017 campaign unique is the contrast that comes out from observing what the major parties are saying and how they are saying it.
It is a recognised fact that there has never been an Opposition as negative as that which the recently dissolved Maltese Parliament, in its new, classroom environment, has seen during the past four years. This realisation becomes even more telling when one considers it has taken place at a time when Malta was making headway in all sectors, breaking employment, tourism, investment, rights and services records by the day. While the Opposition has understandably chosen to keep an active eye on corruption perceptions, no doubt nurtured by an in-bred addiction to it, not once did it feel the need to acknowledge this undoubted success.
Lost in a self-inflicted quagmire of allegations and third-party claims and without a single, remote hint of proof, it has preferred to stick to the theme. It could hardly do otherwise given that the country and its people continue to bask in the glow of economic accomplishment. The result, sadly, has been the mounting of a vicious PN campaign based on personal hatred, the use of combustible language and even the condemnable dropping of hints spiced with obvious anti-democratic ingredients.
One has to be politically blind and fanatically brainwashed not to see what the vast majority of people in these islands are witnessing – an election campaign that clearly balances the positivity of a successful Prime Minister and his national movement with the malicious onslaught from a party in Opposition that continues to hate the very fact it has been sentenced to be in Opposition. It makes a very ugly picture. No one expects political adversaries to agree on anything during an electoral campaign, but to reduce one side of the whole political dialogue to a series of screaming, foul-mouthed declarations and vitriolic is practically a new and worrying development in Maltese politics.
Nationalist hatred of Labour leaders, of course, is not new. At the very same institution where Joseph Muscat was plainly ambushed, albeit unsuccessfully, in 2013 and last Wednesday – the University of Malta – Sir Paul Boffa had been attacked with chairs by fellow students for daring to speak in Maltese at a time when Italian was still considered the “noble” language to use in fascist-infested academia.
In his prime, Dom Mintoff had to take on the British rulers, the Nationalist Establishment and a hopelessly deceitful Church, all in one steaming cauldron of odium and hate. One American Ambassador of the time had written in his memoirs how Mintoff, during a social gathering for friends, colleagues and foreign diplomats, had been seen going to a quiet corner where he cut a very lonely figure lost in his thoughts. That the man fought all these forces and won speaks volumes.
The personal vindictiveness took an even worse turn during the stopgap leadership of Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici and, soon after, with the appointment of Alfred Sant. In the latter case, there were instances when details from his private life were brazenly exposed and hung out to dry by people in the media who should have known better.
There has never been a more positive and approachable Labour leader than Joseph Muscat. It is one of several reasons why so many PN sympathisers and habitual neutrals switched en masse to his national movement for change and a historic 36,000+ majority. It is what his adversaries from within and without cannot stomach and why they have not repaid his positive attitude and openness with like. Instead, they have opted for venom and spit, for fire and brimstone when all that is, and was always, needed is a calm and realistic way to discuss issues of national concern.
Eleven electoral campaigns have shown me so many different character traits of the Maltese nation, divided and biased as it has always been. But the reality check it is now being asked to make is a new feature in both form and substance. It transpires that never has the choice between good and evil, of course in political terms, been so obvious or so clearer.
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Golden generation
Well before my first election campaign of 1971, I was happily part of that generation of young writers and poets who formed the Moviment Qawmien Letterarju, referred to in English as the Movement for the Promotion of Literature. At San Anton Palace last Friday, we actually celebrated the Golden Anniversary of that memorable occasion which eventually led to a new chapter being written in Maltese socio-literary history.
Ten years ago, Charles Briffa recorded all this in his 40th-anniversary book “New Wave Literature in Malta”. This 50th anniversary is now rightly being commemorated with the publication of Alfred Degabriele’s “Siparju”. Both can help you with some much-needed respite from the current state of election fever.....