It may be early days, but it seems that clear symptoms of election fever are manifesting themselves, agitating Malta’s stagnant political waters. Many politicians, and the media under their influence, are becoming more excitable. Politicians addicted to the game of Chinese mirrors are exploiting a media tug-of war.

Former British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, explained in her memoirs (The Path to Power) that “once a politician is given a public image by the media, it is almost impossible for him or her to shed it. At every important stage, the media steps in between the politician concerned and the public, so that people see and hear, not the politician concerned, but the public image to which that politician has been reduced”.

Lady Thatcher remarked that her public image was, on the whole, not a disadvantageous one at first.

She was “the Iron Lady” thanks to Gorbachev, “Battling Maggie” thanks to the political weeklies, and “Attila the Hun” according to the popular press.

All these descriptions conveyed the impression that Maggie was a hard nut to crack.

With the passage of time, and mainly when the British economy began to falter and Maggie overplayed her hand in disposing of the “wets” around her, the media began to say that she was “isolated”, “rooted in the past” and unable to bear seeing the feudal trappings of Britain’s ancien régime crumble into dust.

It worked at both stages. Critics of her European policies accused her of “clinging to the wreckage of an Empire” and others berated her monetarist policies as “heartless” and “inconsiderate of the needs of the poor”.

Media power

This was not the first time that the power of the media made an impact on electoral imagination. Neither was it the last.

In fact, with the first signals heralding an impending election, the media come into their own and arrogate to themselves an image larger than life.

It takes a mature and enlightened electorate to distinguish between fact and fiction, and to identify propaganda and lobby pressure, much of which amounts to manipulation of the unwary.

The first whiffs of electoral breezes are beginning to be felt across the Malta political scene. Perhaps it is because of this that the more active or perspicacious politicians have been assiduously constructing for themselves a niche in the local media. A niche provides visibility.

Politicians with enough grey matter could gain valuable mileage in the eventual political race, provided they offer positive contributions with a creative or constructive slant.

Those who rely on vituperation, those who use the media to give vent to their arrogance, or who lack the intellect to engage in intelligent argument, are likely to do more harm than good to their personal image.

In the first place, they are likely to tarnish their image in the eyes of the new generation of voters, who are more discerning than the electors weaned on past partisanship and polarisation.

Standard operating

procedure

To my mind, there are not enough opinion leaders in the media to push politicians and the political parties against the wall. This being so, politicians and parties making use of the media tend to follow standard operating procedures: they tend, in the main, to take the initiative and to cast their opponents in the sort of images referred to by Margaret Thatcher.

Those supporting the ruling party paint the Opposition as one that is impermeable to change, a “wolf in sheep’s clothing”, one that “shifts its line with every passing vote”, a party hungry for power, a specialist in opportunism and one that gives the electorate just cause for fright.

On its part, Opposition speakers harp on the government’s incompetence and on Malta’s predicament, precipitated by waste and extravagance, and aggravated by the sins of clientelism and sheer mismanagement. They speak of sleaze and perceived corruption.

Alternattiva Demokratika spokesmen intone their maledictions with the slogan: “A Plague on both your Houses”, and bore from within with the recurring suggestion that the main parties are in collusion under the MLPN flag.

There was a time when the main parties were both making a bid to capture the middle ground of local politics. Of late, the ruling party has resurrected old accusations about the Labour Party reverting to its old methods. On its part, the Opposition deploys its guns each time government ministers appear to slip on a banana skin.

Shadow boxing

The main parties therefore convey the general impression that they are more intent on looking over their shoulders than in looking steadily ahead. The media is being used as a forum for shadow boxing.

Present day Malta is beset by pressing problems that have to do with Malta’s survival in a globalised world of merciless competition.

As if this were not enough of a challenge, we have to sort out other major internal issues such as delayed justice, the demands of pensioners, price levels, the welfare gap and environmental degradation.

Here is a forum towards which politicians with a bent for leadership should steer their parties and their media, in fact ALL the media.

They should use the media as vehicles for ideas and not as vehicles of expression. They should aim to stir the electors’ imagination, not their passions, to induce the electorate to soar, not to wallow in the mire of partisanship. Some individual politicians have made progress in this direction. In general, we are miles away. The majority of politicians use the media to play the game of Chinese mirrors.

With radio and television stations also accessible to the same politicians, there is the potential for a media tug-of-war susceptible to manipulation and exploitation by street politicians who believe that what the people want is raw meat.

In which case, the political arena will be in danger of being taken over by Ayatollahs to the sound of tom-toms. That may very well turn out to be a pleasure yet to come.

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