Political insiders and cognoscenti continue to argue about the pros and cons of the next general election date. All sorts of arguments keep popping out of the labyrinth that is Malta’s Byzantine politics.
The average reader can take his/her pick, at best according to his/her fancy and, at worst, according to his/her prejudices. Discriminating readers would rather pause for a while longer, considering that some unexpected turn of events may yet change the level of the playing field.
Public opinion, however, is not as circumspect as all that. It is driven by its own perceptions. Perceptions tend to concentrate on the electoral outcome, rather than the election date. And early perceptions in this regard are already beginning to surface.
The disenchantment extends to hardened opinion makers like Daphne Caruana Galizia and Marisa Micallef, whose credentials have never been questioned in government circles.
On 22 February, Daphne Caruana Galizia wrote in The Malta Independent: “I look at the gamut of politicians on both sides of the House, the candidate lists, the what-have-yous, and there is nobody to vote for. Nobody. Not one person. They all give me the hives. And now I don’t even have a reason to see them as the means to the end of European Union membership…
“Significant numbers of the best and the brightest of the younger generations are fleeing, literally fleeing, Malta. They are following the zeitgeist in search of a contemporary life. Malta was once a prison from which only the very lucky few could escape. It is a prison no longer, and the government has to adapt its thinking and behaviour to suit. By listening only to those sectors of society that are most resistant to change, and the least likely to change –the old, the religious, the ultra-conservative – they are preparing the way for disaster.
“The gulf between this traditional audience for the Nationalist Party, and the growing liberal sector of Maltese society which once voted for it, is now so wide that it is unbridgeable.”
This says it all.
Frustration
Marisa Micallef was equally forthcoming.
She wrote on 18 March (The Malta Independent on Sunday) that “many of the problems faced by the current administration, which are only partially illustrated in local council election results, are the result of looking backward instead of forward, of thinking tactically instead of strategically, of introducing measures which simply defy the laws of gravity”.
She referred bluntly to the vision of the Austin Gatt side of the Nationalist Party “that has caused and is causing so much harm, distrust and bad feeling among the country’s leading administrators and others”.
And she mentioned the complaints voiced by women at an embassy party on Woman’s Day. These referred to the frustrations of some of the country’s leading women in both State and voluntary sectors “who cannot move things, who see their independence being threatened, who see common sense being sacrificed on the altar of ministerial vanities, and who will not vote (although they want to) for this centralizing administration while this attitude persists among certain key ministers”.
I will not argue with the soundness or otherwise of the arguments. What matters is that these perceptions have gained ground. What’s more, they are being given circulation among the section of the electorate that matters, and this is being done by authoritative sources whose standing in this sector is unimpeachable.
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