You get Lawrence Gonzi’s smiling face on Labour Party billboards, and Joseph Muscat’s smiling face on Nationalist Party billboards.
But the smile, in both instances, is meant to give the impression that the respective party leader is laughing at you. It is meant to portray a party leader who is not interested in your well-being but is self-centred and just hungry for power – either to retain it, or to wrest it away. It is meant to show the negative side of the other party, not the positive side of the party that put up the billboard.
This says a lot about how the parties intend to proceed during the election campaign, whenever that comes. We’re getting used to it, but it does not mean that it is the correct way of doing things.
The parties do not seem interested in having billboards with their own proposals, their ideas and their plans for a better future. They do not speak of successes in particular sectors or of ways of improving the quality of life. What the parties want is to denigrate each other, put each other in bad light and, most of all, expose the leader of the opposing party to ridicule. The situation will deteriorate the closer we come to the election and the more the tension rises.
The more recent elections have been turned into presidential-type campaigns: they were all based on the figure of the party leader. And so we had the Labour Party first promoting Alfred Sant and now Joseph Muscat as the better choice, while the Nationalist Party first pushed Eddie Fenech Adami and then Lawrence Gonzi as the best leader Malta could have.
To this end, rather than concentrating on the good qualities of their own leader and party, and what it was proposing, both parties resorted to drawing attention to the worst of their political opponent. It has happened every time since 1996, and it gets worse at every election. With the advancement of technology and better means of communication, there are now many ways in which political parties can get their message across.
It is not only on billboards that we get this kind of negative image of the other side of the political fence. It is there in the party newspapers, their television and radio stations, news portals and it is now even present – in very large doses – on the social networks. And it is not only politicians or party officials who miss no chance to post remarks or links to promote themselves or their party of affiliation; many times supporters of the two parties go a long way to say something good about the party they believe in and belittle the other side. Sometimes, unfortunately, these people stoop so low in their comments that they verge on being defamatory.
In my view, the problem is that the political parties continue to make the same mistake – their campaign targets their diehard supporters, and does not even tickle the neutral section of the voting population. And so, while the more passionate fans will vote PN or PL anyway, the type of campaign chosen by the two parties does little to attract the attention of the floating voters who will eventually be the ones to swing the election one way or the other.
Party messages often have the opposite of the desired effect, as they push people away, rather than bringing them closer, particularly if they are manifestly misleading. While diehard supporters will endorse the message given whatever it is, the neutral voter will see through the deception.
Recently, the two parties held mass meetings: the PN in Floriana, as it traditionally does on the eve of Independence Day, while the Labour Party ended its congress with its own mass meeting two days later. Both parties attracted large crowds, and both crowds showed enthusiastic support. At the end of the PN meeting, PN supporters said they had received an injection of courage because of the large attendance. It was the same for Labour supporters at the end of their event.
But elections are not won by the number of people attending mass meetings, they are won by the people who stay at home when these events are taking place. These people do not watch One or Net, and are not swayed one way or the other by red or blue flags appearing on television.
It is these people that political parties have to target, and yet every time they both ignore this sizeable chunk of the population which, I believe, grows in number between one election and the next.
These people do not look at the Labour billboard showing Dr Gonzi saying “no" to divorce, and approve of it. This is because they know that divorce was legalised during a Nationalist administration even though the Nationalist Party was adamantly against it.
These people do not look at the Nationalist billboard showing Dr Muscat saying he will freeze the minimum wage and believe it. This is because they know that Dr Muscat did not mean to say that any future Cost of Living Adjustments will not be added to the current minimum wage.
This is why I think the two political parties should be more mature in their approach. Instead of putting up slogans and billboards that appeal only to their die-hard supporters, they should focus on issues that will appeal to those who are, as yet, still in doubt, because it is they who will be the deciding factor over which party is elected. It is up to both parties to convince them that a vote for the PN or the PL is better than not voting at all.
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