With each election that passes, the race seems to become more of a battle between the leaders of the two major political parties than one between
policies.
It was not so in 1987, when the democratic future of the country was very much at stake after what had happened in 1981 – when Labour won the election in spite of having obtained fewer votes than the Nationalists, and there followed five years of strife and violence.
It started to be a presidential election in 1992, with the people giving PN leader Eddie Fenech Adami a triumphant win over MLP leader Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici. The preceding five years (1987-1992) had been a breath of fresh air for a country that had been in great difficulty. The memories of the socialist administration were still fresh in the people’s minds, and there was simply a big difference between the way Eddie Fenech Adami’s leadership had transformed the country when compared to what had happened in the Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici years.
It built up sharply in 1996. This time, Dr Fenech Adami had new Labour leader Alfred Sant to contend with. The PN tried hard to put Dr Sant in bad light, but by that time – as often happens in Malta – the people had grown tired of the Nationalist administration, and opted to try something new.
They did not have to wait long before there was another showdown between the two, and this time, in 1998, Dr Fenech Adami was the winner, a feat he repeated in 2003.
Various issues characterised the different elections – VAT in 1996, Labour’s internal problems in 1998 and the European Union membership in 2003 – but each and every time the focus was mostly on the party leaders. The other candidates hardly mattered, and it can safely be said that those seen to be close to their respective leaders stood a better chance of making it to the House of Representatives.
The next election will once again be a battle between the two leaders. And this is more so this time around because there is no particular issue at stake that can shift the balance one way or the other. There is no promise to remove VAT or European Union membership to decide upon. It is just a question of which party convinces the people the most.
And therefore there will be a heavy focus on Lawrence Gonzi as PN leader and Alfred Sant as MLP leader. The man who manages to convince the people that his party has the better plan for the next five years, and perhaps beyond that too, will win the election.
Dr Gonzi will be leading his party at an election for the first time. The Nationalist Party has been in government for 18 of the last 20 years, but Dr Gonzi was appointed minister for the first time in 1998, and then moved on to become party leader and prime minister in 2004. Dr Sant has been opposition leader for a longer time, since 1992. He won the election at the first attempt, but went on to lose the next two, apart from losing the EU referendum.
It is, so to speak, quite abnormal for a party in government to face an election with a new leader while the opposition does so with one that has been there for 15 years.
The MLP says that the Nationalists are tired because they have been in government for far too long and that the country needs new faces. The PN, on the other hand, says that an MLP government will not be “new” at all since the party is still led by a leader who failed as prime minister.
The MLP says that Dr Gonzi did not fulfil the promises he made of a new way of doing politics, and that recently the government has been hit by a series of “scandals” that rocked its foundation. The PN says that the “new beginning” promised by Labour is just a gimmick because Labour is not new at all.
The race is on.