I love electoral campaigns. Apart from the tension caused by the prospect of the return of a miserably failed prime minister, campaigns bring out the true nature of a political party. They allow you to see the party as it really is, and give you a good insight into the kind of government it will form.
The Nationalist Party, as it did in 2003, is singing – literally – a message of confidence in the future and enthusiasm about the present. At its first mass meeting last Sunday, all candidates wore what I can best describe as relaxed weekend attire and sat in ranks to one side. There were a few at whom I really wished to throw rotten tomatoes and boo, but my approach to this is that these weaker characters should not be allowed to destabilise a very good government, and that it is now up to us – the electorate – to return Lawrence Gonzi as prime minister but to vote out the individuals we consider undesirable.
That is the beauty of our electoral system, which people are so keen to criticise: it allows us to return the government to power, if we like the government, while at the same time weeding out the people we don’t like. So instead of bringing down the government because of a couple of individuals you don’t want to see again, just don’t give those individuals your vote. So, if you want Lawrence Gonzi returned as Prime Minister but think that Minister X is a liability, just don’t give X your vote. Give your first preference vote to a Nationalist Party candidate, number the boxes for all the other Nationalist Party candidates, but leave X’s box empty. If enough people do the same he’ll get the message and so will the party bosses. That’s it: it couldn’t be simpler. I do it all the time; if there’s a candidate on the Nationalist Party list who I don’t like, I leave his box empty. That’s all – no fuss or hysteria required; no need to punish a perfectly good government because of a couple of unsavoury individuals. The system allows you to punish individuals without the need to teach an entire party or government a lesson, so go ahead and use it that way, instead of sinking the entire ship and drowning with it.
Lawrence Gonzi, who had come on stage hugging his appealingly nice wife (no wonder married women like him so much) stood before a backdrop of happy, rosy, glowing youth wearing white T-shirts. On television, which is how most of us heard him speak, he was framed by their sunny faces. His body language and presentation are confident and likeable. He comes across as a man who knows what he is doing, who is in control of the situation – a well-balanced person who, if he finds himself opposition leader, will pick up the pieces quickly and get on with life, instead of developing an obsession with becoming prime minister once more to prove some point that everyone else disagrees with.
When the camera panned the crowd, the message it picked up was of happiness, confidence and enthusiasm. The two songs chosen for the campaign are joyous. Crowds, like individuals, have moods, and the mood of a crowd is far more palpable than the mood of a single person. It is so strong that you can even pick it up via a television screen. In between singing, shouting, dancing and cheerfully booing in pantomime fashion all references to the Labour Party and its attempts to keep Malta out of the European Union, the message the crowd was hearing was a positive one. It was essentially this: go forth and conquer; you have a world of opportunity before you. I’m not a great one for hankering after youth. My approach to the passing of the years can be summed up in Ecclesiastes 3:1, “To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heavens”, which is why, despite what Boob-Job Jason and his people might think, I’m not in the market for chassis overhauls. But my main thought while watching was that people who are in their teens and 20s today are the luckiest generation in Maltese history. They really have nothing to hold them back, and can go as far as their abilities will take them. I almost found myself thinking something that I never do: if only I were 18 today.
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That brought my thoughts to the political party that was so determined to ruin young people’s chances – or rather, to the political party that was far too weak to stand up to the man who wanted to lock Malta out of Europe and deprive young island-bound people of the massive advantages that EU membership and EU citizenship give them. 8 March is the fifth anniversary of the referendum in which Alfred Sant didn’t vote, brandishing his unused voting document at a press conference (because he didn’t agree with holding the referendum), and then insulting electors even further by obstinately refusing to acknowledge their verdict. How he deserves to be punished this 8 March if only for doing that. How he deserves to be taught the lesson that he shouldn’t ignore the wishes of the people. How he deserves to be taught that he should have done the decent thing in October 1998 and resigned, instead of leaving his fingernail-marks on the cliff-face of failure as he dangled perilously through the EU referendum and the 2003 general election. Three times, the people told him that they didn’t want him or his policies, that they didn’t trust him or think him up to the mark, so what is he doing here now, facing another general election and hoping to win it by default? Yes, how he deserves to be taught a lesson.
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I switched to Super One, or One TV as they call it nowadays, to catch the mood. Things were very different to the bubbly atmosphere at the mass meeting on Net TV. The message and the mood were seriously negative. Even the song is all wrong – something the party campaign team must have realised now that it is too late, because they don’t seem so keen to play it any more. “The only way is up, Labour” means that Labour is rock-bottom and can’t sink any lower.
A reporter who was there described the feeling in the crowd as a “party atmosphere” with flags and horns – but to pick up the real feeling you have to look at the meeting as a whole, to put it into context, and you can do that best via a television camera panning the entire spectrum. A close relative rang to describe the scene on the stage as “mad, brooding and vindictive”. This was not a description of any individual person, but of the general mood they put across. Though the sun was out, it was black on that stage. Alfred Sant wore dark clothes and ranged behind him, instead of the shiny faces of people whose lives are just beginning, were the glowering visages of men whose lives are drawing to a close, but who are telling us that they can do a better job of leading the country.
They all wore black coats or other light-sucking apparel, the only respite, if you can call it that, coming from the red scarf that Narcy Calamatta, his mop of snow-white hair perched above his leader’s shoulder, had wrapped around his neck. They pressed together to get into the camera shot, and the effect was of a huddle at a funeral as the coffin was going down. One of my sons came into the room just as the camera homed in on The Leader making a serious point with a grim facial expression, his men pressed together behind him in their black coats with their menacing expressions, and the words shot out of his mouth: “They look like something from the Kremlin.”
The dispiriting negativity that emanated from the stage clearly affected the crowd, who seemed unsure what they should be clapping and cheering for: the prospect of a Labour victory for its own sake, because it’s their turn now? Sant was giving them nothing to get excited about, except the prospect of the halving of the electricity surcharge, which even now is strewn with doubt. Oh, and there’s that New Beginning promoted by the touring kowc tal-bidla, but what exactly does it mean? If I am confused, and I examine these things minutely, then I can just imagine how perplexed the crowds at Sant’s meetings are. They know the country is doing well because they’re all working and earning much more than they did some years ago. They have children at university or college, they’re in good jobs; they can see the place improving. So, OK, they’re paying more for electricity, but even they understand that it’s because of the price of oil, and they can’t see it as a reason to change the government, even if they do want “their” party in Castille. They need to be given a reason to vote Labour other than out of tribal loyalty, and all they’ve been given is the halving of an electricity surcharge.
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In the Labour Party, the mood is bad and bleak. You can feel it. The party has nothing to sell, and to make matters worse, Labour has come to the electoral market with a negative product while the Nationalists are selling, once again, a positive one. Some eight years ago or so, I was having lunch with a member of the Labour executive, who has long since been removed to make way for somebody inept, as is right and fitting. We were talking about EU membership, and the different stances of the two parties. “The trouble with us,” he told me, “is that we always seem to be selling messages of despair while the Nationalist Party gives people something to look forward to.” He paid the price of his insight by being flipped out fast. When Labour does try to sell messages of hope, they fall flat because they’re ill-conceived and meaningless, like its current New Beginning.
It is instantly discernible that wherever Sant goes, despite the clutch of enthusiastic ladies who seem wary of touching him, people are wondering: “What is this man still doing here 16 years later, after losing two general elections and a referendum?” His people are clearly wondering the same thing: their keen support for him is so obviously manufactured that you want to send them to acting lessons. Best of all was John Attard Montaldo, who took to a recent podium to shout the praises of his great leader, when five years ago, he was telling a television reporter, while wearing a track-suit, that Sant should do the gentlemanly thing and resign, and in that case, he would contest the leadership.
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Il-kowc tal-bidla – now what is that all about? The Labour Party seems to be trying to recreate the success of 1996, when lots of people didn’t know who Alfred Sant was as he toured the country in his Cittadin Mobil. This time round, it’s going to take a lot more than a bus to do it. If it were not so tragic, it would be comic. Il-kowc tal-bidla arrives in town, its doors hiss open and from its dark depths emerge a failed prime minister who has lost two general elections and one referendum and has been party leader for 16 years, closely followed by a clutch of ageing men who have been ministers in the cabinets of Dom Mintoff and Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici. And the worst bit is that reporters and commentators think that this bus of fools is deserving of treatment equal to that of more serious people, purely because they are a potential government. We must have all left our sense of humour at home, because the only possible reaction to a kowc tal-bidla containing the dregs of the past and the detritus of failure is loud, echoing laughter.