Give people enough rope to hang themselves, and 90 per cent of the time, they’ll go right ahead and do it. That’s been my experience so far, and looking at the reactions to Alternattiva’s rent reform referendum campaign, I see nothing to make me change my view.
Alternattiva, and those who support its campaign, are forging ahead on the premise that there can be only one possible result in a referendum to change the rent laws to remove protection of tenants: a resounding Yes. This is misguided and unsound thinking at best, and at worst, it is irresponsible beyond description. All those frustrated and angry landlords and landladies who flocked to Alternattiva’s public meeting on the matter are delighted that finally somebody is acting. But have they stopped to reflect on the consequences of that action?
A referendum is not the answer to the problem. That much should be obvious, but quite clearly it is not. I think we are all agreed that the situation is grievously unjust, and that it must be addressed with changes to the law and the appropriate safety net for those who will be adversely affected. The only points at issue are when and how. Nobody is claiming that the status quo should be perpetuated, apart from the tenants who are paying ridiculous sums in rent, and who wish to carry on doing so (wouldn’t you?). So how is a Yes vote in a referendum going to change anything? It will not. If there is a Yes vote in this blessed referendum, the original problem of when, and how, to make change will remain. In other words, we will be back exactly where we started.
But that’s not all. While those who favour change stand to gain nothing by achieving a Yes vote, they stand to lose everything if the No vote triumphs. If the result of this referendum is No – the people of Malta don’t want changes to be made to the rent laws – then quite simply, and in the most brutal of language, those who want change are f****d. If the people speak in a referendum, then the government is obliged to listen. If the people vote against change, then the government is obliged to ditch the plans for rent law reform that it has worked on already. For the next 10, 20 or 30 years, until (or if) the matter is once again put to the vote, that’s it.
Have the people who rallied so readily to Harry Vassallo’s bugle-call thought about this? Have they thought about the consequences of a No vote in the proposed referendum, or even the achievable objectives of a Yes vote? Somehow, I doubt it. Like I said, you give people enough rope, and they’ll hang themselves. What I see before me is landlords and landladies rushing to hang themselves with rope provided by Alternattiva. Instead of allowing themselves to be egged on by Harry Vassallo towards a referendum, they should be petitioning the government directly to get it to act on the strategy it already has in hand. To do so, they have to band together and be led by one of their own, rather than by a political pied piper.
* * *
In all the publicity and fanfare, nowhere have I seen a mention of the most important fact that Alternattiva should have put before those who rallied to its rent law meetings: the calculated risk of going to the people. Perhaps Alternattiva has the figures and is keeping them close to its chest – but I doubt it. When a political party decides to press for a referendum, and when a government decides to call one, it should do so in relatively full confidence that the result will be as it wishes. It has to bear in mind, throughout the decision-making process, the consequences of the result going the other way. The fall-out can be devastating, and only the highly irresponsible would forge ahead on impulse and gut feeling.
When the prime minister of the time called the referendum on EU membership, he did not do so at a random moment, but when soundings of public opinion indicated consistently that the number of those in favour was more than 50 per cent of the electorate. Those soundings of public opinion had been taking place regularly since the Nationalist Party’s return to government in 1998. That was responsible behaviour. Had the Prime Minister decided to make his decision rashly and arbitrarily, instead of basing it on sound research, he risked losing EU membership for Malta for good.
When you take risks, in politics, business or your private life, those risks have to be calculated. You can’t just dash in headlong and hope it all turns out for the best. Referendums are a zero sum game, which means that the risks have to be calculated even more seriously. When you lose, you lose it all – because when the people say No, that’s it. You have to pull the curtains shut on the show and let the bickering carry on backstage.
* * *
So, with a proposed referendum like this one, how do you set about calculating the risk of the No vote that will slam the door shut on rent law reform for the next generation? Alternattiva has to find a complicated answer to a very simple question: does the number of protected tenants and their families exceed the number of hard-done-by landlords and landladies, and their families? At first glance, you might think that they balance each other out: one tenant for every landlord. But that’s overly simplistic. Three houses are almost certainly going to be tenanted by different persons, but they may very well have the same landlord.
Another crucial point has to be factored into the equation: the people who are neither tenants nor landlords, and who consequently might not give a damn. I’m close to being one of them. The only reason I give a damn at all is because very close relatives and some dear friends have for decades been denied access to their capital assets because of sitting tenants, and I can see the glaring injustice. It doesn’t affect me directly, but it affects those who are close to me. One of those sitting tenants is a large trading company paying peanuts for a large house on one of Valletta’s most important streets. But on the other hand, I also have at least one dear friend who is a sitting tenant, and who does not have the means at her disposal to put a roof over her head – either by paying rent or getting together the deposit for a flat – should she be forced out by changes to the rent laws.
* * *
People vote in a referendum when the issue has direct bearing on their lives, or when they are emotionally involved in some way. The IVF referendum in Italy failed not because people obeyed the guidance of the Vatican. That suggestion is completely fatuous, given that the Italians obey the guidance of the Vatican in almost nothing, and have had abortion and divorce for almost as long as we’ve been a republic. It failed because, as one prominent European newspaper put it, IVF has no direct relevance to most people’s lives, and so they went to the beach instead of voting.
That could happen to the rent law referendum in Malta, unless the political parties jump into the fray and tell their supporters how to vote – a dreadful prospect that we can very well do without. Without political interference, the people most likely to vote will be landlords and landladies, protected tenants, and the close relatives of both opposing camps, and those who are either motivated by spiteful jealousy towards landlords (No) or envious ‘iss hej’ malice towards the protected tenants (Yes). It is a matter of which camp is the most numerous. Had I been devoid of friends and relatives who are interested parties, I would have – in that excellent Maltese expression – nigi naqa u nqum (I couldn’t give a toss). I am neither a landlady nor a protected tenant. I am never going to be the latter (it’s impossible, because the law changed in 1995) and if I ever become the former, it will be under the post-1995 regime, which allows rents to be fixed by the market and does not protect tenants just because they are Maltese.
The people who are in this ‘what do I care?’ position are far greater than the numbers of landlords, landladies and protected tenants put together. It’s all very well trying to get together the 30,000 signatures to force the government to hold a referendum. But then how do you motivate the minimum required percentage of the electorate to go out and vote for a cause that has no direct bearing on their lives? We’re not talking about a referendum on bird-shooting here. People like birds and will go out and vote for their protection. But I don’t think many are going to work up a head of sympathetic steam for those who have sitting tenants in their houses.
Alternattiva is trying to turn this into a national rallying-cry. It can never be that. The Maltese are essentially socialist – with a small ‘s’ – deeply envious of those who have more than they do, and with the marked characteristic of preferring to drag their betters down to their level rather than working their way up to theirs. We are the opposite of America. We like failure and hate success. Schadenfreude is a national trait. We want to see others fail; we delight in the fact that others have lost their money or their property; we relish the prospect of others losing their assets, even if grave injustice is involved. The Maltese who are not landlords themselves are never going to vote for a change in the rent laws, because they are not going to act in such a way that will allow others to take possession of assets, while they themselves will be able to take possession of nothing at all.
I will go one step further and say that this terrible, destructive trait, rather than prompting people not to vote in a referendum, will actually make them do so. It will make them vote No,
putting paid for many more years to the envied property-owners’ chances. Or they might vote Yes, to see their protected neighbours, who pay just Lm80 a year while they are in debt with the bank for a home loan, thrown into confusion. In a simple Maltese word, iwwahluhulhom.
* * *
Naïve impetuosity is one thing. Misinformation is another. I have seen it reported in this campaign that the existing laws are preventing landlords from renting to Maltese, because they are afraid that they will never get such tenants out of their property. This misinformed and misinforming argument then goes on to suggest that there is a large number of Maltese who are desperate to find somewhere to rent but cannot do so because landlords will not take them. In 1995 the law was changed, so any Maltese renting after that year is not protected as he or she would have been before. The factors that stop Maltese from renting a home are something else entirely: wages are low, making rent unaffordable; and, most would rather pay a monthly instalment towards a home loan instead of paying the same amount in rent. So they live with their parents until they’ve got the deposit together, and then they move out. On a Maltese salary, you can’t pay rent and concurrently save for a deposit on your first home.
* * *
The proposed referendum is a dangerous political gimmick that risks too much so as to force the government’s hand into overnight action. The government’s staggered plan – first limited liability businesses in protected tenancies, then individual-run business like sole traders and shopkeepers, and then the removal of the automatic right of inheritance of a lease, except for widows and widowers, and so on – is by far the most sensible option. No government can wake up tomorrow and suddenly say, “Right now, everyone out on the street.” But that is what this referendum is all about; that is what a Yes vote will call for.
It is the madness of the uninformed and the utterly selfish, pursuing their own narrow objectives and failing to consider the wider picture. Even the businesses we love to despise need time to plan and to allocate resources for new premises. Force them out on the street from one day to the next (or virtually that) and there are serious economic consequences, not least of which is the loss of jobs and the snowball effect. The same goes for private individuals, who cannot overnight go from paying Lm100 a year to paying Lm1200 a year. There can be no overnight change without tremendous social and economic damage.
The government’s delay in implementing its considered plan has allowed Alternattiva to highjack the issue with highly prejudicial consequences for all concerned. Rent law reform is not a political horse to be ridden into battle; it is a serious
matter and should be treated as such.