There has never been a time in politics when impressions did not matter and when unscrupulous individuals did not distort the facts for their own ends. The rules of democracy, nevertheless, require politicians to be truthful, and journalists to consider facts as sacred. Opinion-makers are free to comment but are also expected to be down to earth.

Things have changed. There has been an increasing tendency to control information and to manage its dissemination for specific political ends. The spin

doctor has come into the

picture and his shadow gets taller and taller.

News management

What is more, ever since Dr Goebbels, the black art of news management has been bureaucratised and taken over to serve government ends. From that point onwards, the notion that all is fair in love and war, and politics, rapidly began to gain ground.

Political parties employ marketing men to sell their programmes. Governments set up departments specialising in the art. Spin doctors are their spokesmen and they trade in sound bytes, bland language and vague pledges.

Like nature, politics abhors a vacuum. It is the business of spin doctors to occupy every empty space and to load it with an incoherent mixture of aspirations – free enterprise and more regulation, more social initiatives and less taxation, individual freedom and social equality.

Tightrope of incoherence

Spin doctors perform on the tightrope of this incoherence. They match their dexterity with their mendacity and there are moments when they succeed in swinging public opinion.

Over time, public opinion sees through them. It does so in proportion to the degree of electoral maturity. The process can be dangerous to the democratic process, because it can induce apathy, cynicism and a distaste for democratic politics.

Abstention in elections may be a manifestation of this

disillusionment.

In Malta, it is not only the hunting and farming communities that feel let down and short-changed by political spin doctors. Various environmental groups and organisations representing civil society have been

provoked to the point of protesting in the streets, and they come from areas that cheered the spin doctors more than others in the past. They come from Qui-si-Sana, Marsascala, Gozo, even from Birzebbuga and Gzira.

Disenchantment

All of these are older and wiser. If they also all get angrier, their disenchantment may be fatal to the democratic process.

The political establishment would be well advised to move back from the precipice and return to the older, time-honoured style of politics, which involves less spin and a total commitment to restoring public trust.

At issue is the legitimate purpose of politics and not so much the intensity of the appeal for voting support. Democracy needs politicians. It has a greater need for their professionalism.

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