It is understandable that the leader of the opposition should declare with triumph that the result of the local council elections is a vote of no confidence in the Nationalist Party, and a vote of confidence in his party – and, by extension, a vote of confidence in him. As a notorious woman famously said in the 1960s trial of a British politician, “Well, he would say that, wouldn’t he?”
Alfred Sant is a man playing a zero sum game. He either wins it all, or he loses it all. In four years’ time, he will be eligible for a state pension. The fact that it will be the pension of a former prime minister does not make this fact more palatable. It is an emotionally taxing experience to reach pensionable age knowing that your future is behind you but your lifetime objectives remain unachieved. I can understand and sympathise with him on the human level, but I can never accept a situation where the personal wishes and destiny of a politician are put before the good of the political party he leads.
A few months before the arrival of his first pension cheque from the Central Bank, the electorate will decide whether he is to be prime minister for five years or a pensioner for the rest of his days. There is going to be little for him in the way of consultancy work. Who in business will trust his judgement? If the electorate opts for ‘pensioner’ rather than ‘prime minister’, he faces a future made up almost entirely of pet poultry and books – which, to my way of thinking though clearly not to his, is very much more attractive.
The truth is that Dr Sant survives on a knife-edge, and has done so since the catastrophic debacle that began on a hot evening of shouting at Birgu in the summer of 1998. Since then, he has lost two general elections and a referendum about a policy on which he had built his entire manifesto. There could have been no clearer vote of no confidence, in him as leader far more than in the party he leads.
Vague attempts have since been made to blame the first electoral loss on Dom Mintoff and the second on the people’s wish to become part of the European Union. Laying aside the fact that wholesale rejection of Dr Sant’s only policy – ‘no to the EU’ – amounts to wholesale rejection of Dr Sant as a politician, we may now consider calmly what really happened in the spring of 2003.
The leader of the opposition knows as well as I do that, until the 11th hour, the referendum could have gone either way. It was never a dead cert that the ‘yes’ vote would triumph, and for a time when the votes were being counted, I felt physically ill. Malta’s destiny hung by the proverbial thread.
Two years later, I can see just how great a part the leader of the opposition played in ensuring that Malta now belongs to the European Union. Time makes these things clearer. As the tension mounted and the referendum date drew closer, Dr Sant’s behaviour became increasingly disturbing to those who were trying to reach a firm decision.
They were forced to balance their views about the European Union, which they may very well have shared with him, with their views about his fitness to be prime minister, which they may not have shared with him at all. The fact that Alfred Sant was the chief exponent of the anti-EU sentiment would have actually caused many people who were of that sentiment to think again.
If they were left with any doubt at all after casting their vote in the referendum, that doubt would have dissipated on viewing the leader of the opposition’s highly disturbing performance on a truck outside party headquarters when the result was announced. Common decency and the law prevent me from spelling out exactly what I think was going on, but there is no need to do so, because it was quite clear to all those watching the spectacle on their television sets, and calling their friends, horrified, to do the same.
That day on the truck was the day Alfred Sant lost the general election. The referendum hung by a thread right up until the last minute, but the election did not. When people voted again a few weeks later, they were not just declaring their determination that Malta should form part of the European Union. They were also saying that they did not want Alfred Sant to be prime minister.
It has become a commonplace that were it not for the question of EU membership, the Nationalist Party would not have won the election two years ago. Those who trot out this statement should think about it a little harder, and factor their own behaviour into the equation. Are they saying that if Alfred Sant were for EU membership, they would have voted for him to run the country instead of Dr Fenech Adami – or that they would not have voted at all, but remained home, indifferent to Malta’s fate?
No, they are not saying that. So who are all these other people they are talking about – the ones who would have voted for Dr Sant in 2003 when previously they had voted for Dr Fenech Adami, had both leaders shared a policy in favour of EU membership? These people do not exist. Two years ago, those who voted for EU membership also voted to eliminate Dr Sant, in the hope that, for the sake of the country, the Labour Party would regroup, find a new leader, and render itself more acceptable. Some of those people had voted Labour all their lives and had been reduced to taking desperate measures. It is not only Nationalist voters who use the ballot to give messages to their preferred political party. Labour voters do it too.
It is not because of the question of EU membership that the Labour Party lost the last election. It is because people felt they could not choose as prime minister a man they last saw making a sad and disturbing spectacle of himself on a truck, claiming before confused revellers that partnership had won the referendum.
Since that day, Alfred Sant has not consolidated the Labour vote, but has been the cause of further haemorrhage. The Labour Party has continued to lose votes among its traditional supporters, and has not made any new converts among the young, nor captured anyone from Nationalist territory. Dr Sant is too clever to make the mistake of translating disillusionment with the Nationalist Party among its voter base into support for his party, yet he is encouraging his followers to think this way.
It is in his interest to do so. He has to do anything possible to protect his position as leader of the Labour Party lest he be summarily removed as George Borg Olivier was removed from the Nationalist Party when disillusionment and anger set in. Around him there must be mutterings that the Nationalists’ decline in popularity does not mean that Dr Sant is becoming more popular, but no one appears to be prepared to say this out loud. Dr Sant is actually more unpopular now than he was in 2003. A simple job with a calculator, a good dose of commonsense and keen powers of observation and analysis reveals this immediately.
The Nationalist Party, too, has lost tremendous support, but the significant factor here is that those who voted for it last time round did not go out and vote Labour in the MEP elections. They voted Alternattiva. In these last local council elections, they did not even do that. They stayed at home.
Like me, who will vote Nationalist next time round in the hope of sparing Malta from Alfred Sant as prime minister, they may simply not have been bothered about local councils, or may actually hate them because of the wardens who annoy them so much. They may be annoyed about the policy decisions that have put a bigger dent into their earnings. They may simply be unmotivated because ‘their’ party is not in opposition. They may also have the intelligence to realise that these things really do not matter at all except to politicians.
Yet this does not mean that in 2008, when they are faced with a choice between Dr Gonzi and Dr Sant, they will choose the latter as their prime minister. They will have to balance the fact that they are fed up of the Nationalists with the other fact that they really do not want a man who disturbs them to be prime minister.
It is not enough to say that because we are ‘safely’ in the EU, it does not make a difference who runs the country. Of course it makes a difference who runs the country – we are in the EU right now, and the prime minister and his cabinet are in our faces almost every minute of the day, shaping our lives or not shaping them. They are all over the radio, television and newspapers; they invade every area of our lives except the most private. The EU is just a safety-net and an escape route; it is a last resort should we wish to get away, and not a substitute for central government.
* * *
Far from being a vote of confidence in the Labour Party, the results of the local council elections are the very opposite. The percentage obtained by the Labour Party increased, and that obtained by the Nationalist Party fell, but this is not because more people rushed out and voted Labour. It is because traditional Labour supporters determinedly went out to vote, as one does when one’s party has been in opposition for some time (it is the siege mentality), but those who usually vote Nationalist felt no such urge and stayed home. They did not even work up the enthusiasm to vote for Alternattiva. Alfred Sant is not foolish in extrapolating from these restricted local council election results to calculate with absolute certainty the outcome of a general election in 2008. He is merely trying to protect his position within the party. He is looking after Number One. The foolish ones are those who believe him.
* * *
People manifest different behaviour depending on the type of election and its possible effect on their lives. There is nothing at stake in a local council election, except for the politicians involved. What do I care whether the Mosta local council is Labour or Nationalist? I care so little that I do not even know what its political leanings are. I only voted once in those elections, and that is when I could not very well not do so, because it was a ‘two for the price of one’ with the MEP elections, and it would have been very bad manners to return the ballot paper to the nice woman who handed it to me with a laugh. I asked our plumber, with whom I was chatting in the queue, whose box he was going to tick, and I did the same.
In the MEP election, plenty of people voted for Arnold Cassola because they thought he would make a good case for Malta in the European parliament. Harry Vassallo made the cardinal error of doing as Alfred Sant is doing now, and extrapolating from those results to make triumphal claims about his party’s popularity. When I wrote a few pieces calling for calm to be restored, based on observations, from my quiet corner, of human nature and political reality, I was sarcastically attacked by Dr Vassallo, Claire Bonello and other media exponents of Alternattiva, who appeared to believe that the whole of Malta was at their feet.
They had made the classic political (and generally human) error of listening only to those who think as they do, and reckoning these to be a good sample of the views of the nation, when they were simply the views of the notoriously fickle chattering classes. The local council elections must have been a great surprise and disappointment to them. They were neither to me. Perhaps they should not have been so rude when I sounded a note of caution.
* * *
The results of the local council elections were entirely predictable and have no special significance. Labour supporters went out and voted because they were motivated to give a show of political strength; Nationalist supporters were either disillusioned or just do not give a damn about councils and so stayed home in large numbers, along with many Labour supporters. Alternattiva obtained the usual percentage. Did anyone think it would be any different? If so, they are living on a different plane, along with all those who think that these results will be mimicked in the general election, when 98 per cent of the electorate turns out to vote and the future of the country is at stake.