Victor Degiovanni, the secretary of the Communist Party of Malta, insisted in an interview with Francesca Vella that the party has kept a very low profile since it contested the 1987 general election,

but it never stopped being active. He explained the relevance of communist parties in this day and age, and said his party hopes to actively enter the political scene in future, though definitely not at the next general election.

I met Victor Degiovanni at the party’s premises, a shared office in Strait Street, Valletta. Pictures of communist politicians such as Lenin, as well as the co-founders of Marxism, Marx himself and Engels, immediately caught my eye in the drab office, shared with other left-wing movements such as Zminijietna.

“We are independent of Zminijietna, although in the 1980s we were the ones who started publishing the newspaper. Nowadays we don’t run the newspaper ourselves, although, like Alternattiva Demokratika, the Labour Party and others, we still contribute to the newspaper,” said Mr Degiovanni.

He explained that the party was always active in the background, and recently started issuing statements every so often.

The party doesn’t plan to contest the elections in the immediate future, certainly not at the next election.

Mr Degiovanni said party members regularly attend international meetings of communist parties and they have established relations with members of the German democratic socialist political party, Die Linke, represented in the European Parliament’s European United Left/Nordic Green Left, along with other European left-wing parties.

I asked Mr Degiovanni who, if any, the other members of the Communist Party of Malta are, but he said the party never discloses its membership base, because some members prefer to be unnamed. Neither did he want to say how many members the party currently has.

The Communist Party of Malta was founded in 1969 by Pawlu Agius. He was the first who managed to set up an organised communist party. Small communist cells had existed since the 1920s, but they were always clandestine.

Maltese communists militated in the British or Italian communist parties, or even undercover in the Labour Party.

Maltese communists particularly came out in the open in 1971. Past members include Labour MP Evarist Bartolo, who Mr Degiovanni described as a “moderate”.

“There were two tendencies in the party; generally, you took either the Euro-communist road or the Soviet one. Mr Bartolo didn’t spend a long time as a member of the Communist Party.”

Communists are socialists, he explained, but communism is not an ideology, it is a party; the ideology is always socialist.

Mr Degiovanni said the Communist Party, like similar parties in other countries, is working towards a more just society. The time of revolutions is gone, he said.

“We’re not here for any revolutions – revolutions are brought about by people, not by parties. There was a change in attitude with the fall of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).

“With the fall of the USSR, workers were not respected the way they used to be. Contractors started offering less pay, but some people simply had no choice. Take Maltapost, for instance, new workers don’t know if they’ll be working the following day.”

Mr Degiovanni said that while certain communist practices are no longer applicable, certain ideas may be. The USSR was above the state, he said, it was the guardian of the revolution; that cannot happen nowadays.

Asked about the main downfalls of Maltese society, the party secretary didn’t mince his words. Workers are paying for the mistakes of neoliberal policies. Take the global recession and the utility tariffs, for instance.

In a recent statement, the Communist Party of Malta drew comparisons between the situation in Malta and that in Greece.

It said the Nationalist Government increased the basic energy utilities to exorbitant levels with the excuse of higher international prices of oil and gas, while at the same time energy prices in other EU countries, such as Cyprus and Italy, have gone down.

“Maltese workers, like Greek workers and others elsewhere, are being made to pay for the failure of neoliberal policies. Poverty in Malta is rearing its head again. About 2,000 families now have no electricity and water supply because they could not afford to pay their bills. 17 per cent of the population risks falling below the poverty line.

“The measures announced by the Greek government are a frontal attack at workers’ livelihood, which serves only the interests of the ruling class that greedily looks only at profits, and would trample on workers’ rights to ensure it.” 

Speaking about the privatisation of public entities and the fact that the government is bound by EU regulations to provide the fewest subsidies possible, Mr Degiovanni said the Communist Party of Malta was always against EU membership.

It is not ideal for a small country like Malta, he said, but realistically, we cannot leave the EU now that we have joined.

“It would be a dream to leave the EU, but workers and the most vulnerable people in society cannot continue to carry such big burdens.”

With regard to the national airline, Air Malta, Mr Degiovanni said that eventually it will have to be privatised, just like other public entities have had to be privatised.

He mentioned the Italian national airline, Alitalia, which was in trouble, and the government couldn’t help it; this could also happen to Air Malta, he said.

Talk moved on to the Labour Party, which Mr Degiovanni said was a real left-wing party when Dom Mintoff was party leader.

Nowadays the PL, like other socialist parties elsewhere, does what it believes is right in the circumstances; the Communist Party of Malta wants to offer an alternative to people who feel disillusioned by the PL.

At the same time, he said the party clearly doesn’t want to hinder the Labour Party and it will definitely not contest the next general election.

But will this small party, seemingly a one-man party right now, manage to voice its views and concerns effectively when it does eventually contest a general election?

In 1987, said Mr Degiovanni, the Communist Party contested the general election, and the results were “disastrous”: they only managed to get about 120 votes.

Before the electoral rules were changed (following a proposal made by Mr Mintoff) to suit the two-party system, the Communist Party of Malta hoped it would gain the sympathy of a number of Labour supporters, who had promised to vote for both the Labour Party and the Communist Party.

He said that since the electoral rules were changed, small parties need to gain enough votes to surmount an unofficial threshold of 17 per cent. Naturally, the new rules were approved unanimously by both major parties, said Mr Degiovanni.

He said the electoral system is good, but it doesn’t work well in a country such as Malta, where people fear cross-party voting. In 1987 the Communist Party proposed an election for parties, not candidates.

“But the main political parties will always be in agreement on this particular matter. This is why Alternattiva Demokratika never managed to be successful and why they won’t be successful unless the electoral rules are changed or people’s mentalities change.”

Visit the Communist Party of Malta’s Facebook page, or its website, www.communistpartymalta.blogspot.com, for further information.