I came across a quote attributed to the Financial Times recently and it went like this. “Is it really comforting that parties lose their members, abandon their ideas, become disengaged from a broader social movement, motivate ever fewer voters and nonetheless maintain an iron grip on politics?”
The iron grip of course is due to the fact that there are only political parties to choose from, even if, thankfully, civil society is finally beginning to show it has some teeth. In Europe, this has become a matter of heated debate. There are those who maintain that following the de-ideologisation of Europe (our Prime Minister acknowledged that when he said there are no ideologies left) and the rise of the floating voter, parties no longer stand for anything or anybody. Almost everywhere in the western world they are suffering from a decline in voter turnout, diminishing party loyalty, declining membership and a decreasing social concern.
Nor do they provide principled politicians, reforming programmes and innovative ideas. They have simply become creative communications outlets offering something to everybody. They serve as routes to public office and the bureaucracy, and have many high-ranking officials, advisers and the like among their members. With people of dubious merit in charge of the engine room, it is no wonder that when a breakdown occurs the good ship finds herself adrift and at the mercy of the waves.
An editorial in the New York Times a few days ago, worried about what was happening in Europe, bluntly stated that the problem is there are no European leaders, just a German chancellor, a French president, an Italian prime minister and others who profess a continental vision but never look much beyond their local political interests. It may be a good thing that China too is worried and seems ready to bail out the EU to safeguard her major trading partner.
All this is very bad news for financial systems and democracy as we know it and seems to point to an uncertain future. The first thing that needs to be resolved is whom do MPs represent? The internal on-going debate within the PN has acknowledged some of this but it has not nearly gone far enough. And with time running out the best we can expect is another patch-up.
Why is this happening? Malta generally simply reacts to what happens elsewhere and it takes time for change to arrive here even in the communications age. And elsewhere, one of the most important political shifts has been the “modernisation” of the Left. Ex-socialist and moderate left-of-centre parties alike have moved to the centre, and in some cases past it. They have renounced outright egalitarianism, no longer advocate public ownership as an end in itself, seek opportunities for “partnership” with the private sector, prefer “conservative” macroeconomic policies, and favour moderation in taxes and public spending. This of course followed the Russian glasnost when everybody in the West could see that Communism was even worse than was thought and the vocabulary of that era fell from grace in a big way.
Tony Blair’s Labour government in Britain was probably the clearest case of this “new” or “progressive” policy shift, but it was by no means unique to Europe. Something similar happened to America’s Democrats under Bill Clinton. It was Mr Clinton, a “New” Democrat, who duly signed the legislation “ending welfare as we know it” − terminating the federal government’s commitment of 61 years’ standing to provide cash assistance to the poor. The world has changed, Tony Blair once told his party’s traditional supporters, but our values have not. Have I heard that recently? It certainly didn’t apply to Bill Clinton.
This is what I meant when I spoke of the overcrowding of the centre nowadays. Is the shift of social democracy to the centre pushing right-of-centre parties further to the right or is the left itself being re-populated? In Europe the shift to the right has not apparently bothered voters much and Social Democrats are still agonising why they cannot find a winning formula despite ditching their traditional baggage. Ironically, Malta may very well be one of the few successes they might yet boast of after the next elections.
Echoing the financial turmoil in Europe, the Prime Minister told the faithful last Sunday that he does not intend Malta to become a Greece. We all say amen to that, but it depends on many factors: one is the long-term expenditure commitment and another is what an incoming party – should the PL win the day – will really find in the kitty. The Greek tragedy was the making of the previous conservative governments, which not only left the Socialists to pick up the tab, but are now actually trying to make political capital out of the misery of their citizens. That is why Angela Merkel asked them to show some maturity. Will they? Would we?
If that scenario comes to pass, the PN can blame nobody but itself. It has been in power for too long to be able to pass the buck. And it is only now that it seems to have realised how badly Air Malta has been performing, years and years after every chairman and every Minister of the LPPN was allowed to milk the airline. It is only now that we make a great play of cutting off the innumerable perks, after the government had rubbed salt into the national airline’s wounds by bringing in subsidised rivals in answer to popular discontent. Do we still remember Air Malta pleading for a level playing field? Now I suppose we shall disperse the redundant workers here, there and everywhere, as we did with the Drydocks workers an because the bill won’t appear on Air Malta’s account some people might think the crisis has been fixed. But the cost remains. There is always a cost. And it is the taxpayer who has to keep on covering the vast millions recklessly thrown away ever since the nation’s treasure chest fell into the hands of local politicians.
The internal debate within the PN isn’t going to be easy, because if it is true that, at European level certainly, parties have lost their souls, then logically where can it find the cleansing fire so necessary for its rebirth? The hierarchical system based on a “dar ċentrali” is obsolete. The PL is not calling itself a movement for no reason. It is the way to go now. A political party must embrace the diversity that is mostly used as a slogan with little meaning. And by diversity I am referring to the myriad groupings of Maltese citizens in areas of special interest whose voices must be taken into account. Perhaps MPs ought to be encouraged to go back to the days when they enjoyed the freedom to use their initiative to attract voters. Generals are necessary but it is battle-hardened front line troops that win battles.
In other words, the sooner the Ivory Tower is pulled down the better.
The Biblical fix, practised by Christ and ardently followed in the early days of Christianity, was to go into the harshness and the barrenness of the desert until such time as one was cleansed. And even there one occasionally ran into the devil. To avoid the desert – and the devil − the PN needs more than to stop the in-fighting; it has to reconnect with the ordinary citizen and his increasing and manifold concerns.