Twenty-five years ago, Malta was on the eve of an election that was to bring about an end to 16 years of socialism and serve as a first step towards European Union membership under a Nationalist government.

Stephen Calleja looks back at the event with the benefit of hindsight – and links it to the present-day scenario

The 9th of May is today celebrated as Europe Day, and in Malta we have given greater significance to this day ever since Malta joined the European Union in 2004 after more than a decade of political battle. It is also the day of the feast of St Ġorġ Preca, who became the first Maltese to be declared a saint by Pope Benedict XVI in Rome in June 2007.

But this particular day evokes other memories, this time connected to local politics and history – because it was on 9 May 1987 that the Nationalist Party won what can be considered as a watershed election, one that brought an end to the 16 years of socialist rule, and was the first step towards EU membership.

In another twist, the 9th of May was also the birthday of Raymond Caruana, a Nationalist Party activist who was murdered when shots were fired at the PN Gudja club in December 1986. In the days leading up to the election, the PN newspaper In-...Tagħna had urged voters to give Raymond a birthday present by voting PN.

Who knows, maybe the 9th of May will take on further historic significance if, 25 years to the day on Wednesday, the government loses the parliamentary vote on the budget implementation bill. Who knows if, 25 years to the day after the PN’s historic victory, a Nationalist government will collapse on the whims of one of its own MPs, Franco Debono, who has attacked his own government and Prime Minister in no small way over the past months. Until now, he has only gone as far as to abstain, leaving the government to plough ahead on the Speaker’s casting vote.

We’ll know more on Wednesday.

Going back to 1987, the Labour Party had been in power in spite of having technically lost the 1981 election after having obtained fewer voters – but had won a majority of parliamentary seats – in what was amply described as a perverse result, one that Labour reluctantly acknowledged only recently when Joseph Muscat became party leader.

Today, with the benefit of 25 years of hindsight, the Labour Party is still being punished by history for having led the country against the people’s will, as it is still to recover from that 1987 defeat, and is still to complete a full term in office. It has obtained the support of the majority only once since that time – in 1996 – but it failed to govern for the whole legislature, having been forced to call an early election in 1998 after internal strife had engulfed the party.

It was ironically Dom Mintoff himself – the man who clung to power in 1981, claiming that the Constitution gave him the right to do so, before passing on the party’s reins to Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici in 1984 – who brought down the short-lived Alfred Sant government.

The 25th anniversary of that famous PN victory is paradoxically being ignored by the present-day Nationalist Party and highlighted by the Labour Party, for different reasons.

The Nationalist Party does not want to remind the people that it has been in power for so long – excluding the 22-month Labour stint mentioned earlier. This, it is believed, would work against it as it prepares for the coming election, scheduled to be held within a year or so, if not before, seeing that as explained earlier the PN is currently facing a similar scenario as the one Labour had in 1998 – with its one-seat majority threatened by a renegade MP.

In fact, the PN refutes the idea of a “quarter of a century in government”, quickly pointing out that, after all, Labour had its chance in 1996 and lost it, and could have had a better opportunity to be re-elected had it not been so hard-headedly against EU membership at the start of this century.

On the other hand, the Labour Party persists in its claim that the country needs a change in leadership because the PN has been there for too long – 25 years, it says, conveniently forgetting its brief disastrous spell at Castille.

Labour exponents continuously harp on what they say is a government that has gone beyond its expiry date. The party itself is keen to remind the people of the government’s mistakes in this and previous administrations, without so much as suggesting how it plans to face future challenges. This, Labour believes, is a strategy that could lead it to victory when the time comes.

That the Nationalist Party is not commemorating the end of socialist rule – when its victory based on the “work, justice and liberty” slogan had pulled the country from the brink of civil strife after long periods of political violence – is highly indicative of a party that wants to be seen as still young and fresh, and still the better option for Malta for a fourth consecutive term.

One reason for this low profile is that the highly-publicised commemorations last November of the 25th anniversary of the Tal-Barrani mass meeting incidents and the Raymond Caruana murder seem to have backfired on the PN. The activities, which spanned for weeks, were aimed at re-igniting the spirits of the faithful at a difficult time for the PN, which was recovering from a year of attacks on the ministerial honoraria and the vote in favour of divorce, which the party had fought against.

But such activities, while welcomed by the diehards, did little to elicit positive feedback from neutral quarters and from the voters who sway between one party and another in different elections, and are seen as being the ones who hold the balance of power. They were shrugged off as a feeble attempt at gaining political mileage from events that, yes, had a great impact at the time, but should no longer have so much bearing on today’s way of doing politics.

The Nationalist Party has one point in its favour however, and this is the fact that some of the top exponents of the Labour Party today were part of the Labour government between 1981 and 1987, either as ministers, MPs or party officials. This could be a drawback for Labour, as it seeks to promote a new image of a modern and progressive party while still harbouring politicians who had not accepted the people’s will.

Labour wants to steer clear from those dark years in Maltese history, when even Church schools had become a target. It wants to give the idea that is has moved on from those times.

This 25th anniversary of the 1987 elections comes at a time of struggle for both parties.

The Nationalist Party cannot bring up the pre-1987 years too much as it would appear to the public to be dependent on Labour’s past mistakes to be re-elected to government again.

For its part, the Labour Party cannot be seen as dismissing those years too easily because, after all, it carries great responsibility for those five years and five months of tension, strife and political uncertainty.