Very much like the legendary Scarlet Pimpernel, in his reaction to the excellent Labour Budget for 2014 Opposition Leader Simon Busuttil kept trying to play hide and seek with his bemused listeners on both sides of the House of Representatives.
His “now you see me, now you don’t” attitude to it all frankly left everyone incredulous as to whether he was coming or going. Did he like the budget or did he not, Prime Minister Joseph Muscat asked in his immediate retort, at the same time resorting to the no less appropriate metaphor of the romantic game with flower petals.
But the whole business of Busuttil’s puerile attempt to take some polish off the Labour Budget’s instant public appeal is a lot more serious than the mere personal perplexity – let alone amusement – it caused to thousands of Maltese and Gozitan citizens. It showed that the NEW leader of the Nationalist Opposition is anchored to the very OLD and obsolete party stance of negativity.
The glaring contrast that was apparent after listening to the two speeches could hardly go unnoticed. While Busuttil, author of the soundly defeated PN election manifesto last March, chose to stick to old-style politics – which dictate that anything good from the government side is to be shot down and condemned – Joseph Muscat hit back on the wings of a new and refreshing approach to Maltese politics, the very thing for which an absolute majority of voters had, after all, voted in the March general election.
In typical old-style politics, Busuttil made a contradictory presentation of the Opposition view on the budget: two straight hours of incredible dilly-dallying that reflected his and his party’s hesitation over dealing with a budget that was the clearest of indications that the new government is determined to change the face of Maltese politics by keeping its promises at whichever stage it deems necessary and not on the eve of a general election – as had been the routine and politically convenient practice of previous administrations.
It is sad to watch the antics of a party that apparently cannot find the resolve and the honesty to accept defeat and move ahead. Instead, it continues to apply time-honoured tactics as if the whole Maltese nation has remained stuck in that same old groove that once crudely pigeon-holed people into colour schemes on antiquated ideological lines. That red-face-blue-face billboard so roundly condemned during the last election campaign somehow still permeates post-election Nationalist thinking.
While the Opposition tries to come to grips with its own leader’s vacillations, Joseph Muscat’s new Labour government has embarked on its long-term voyage during which people with an appetite for work and the prosperity it brings can play their part regardless of their social status or political inclination. This, of course, does not ring too well in Nationalist ears, used as they are to the one-tone politics of the past.
No one has a divine right to govern. Only those who commit themselves to the electorate and are then true to their words can survive in the new political scenario taking shape all over the world, not least here on these islands – for too long driven into inexplicable walls and situations by the extinct methods of division and imposition.
Joseph Muscat has not merely given a temporary breather to the Labour Party. He has remoulded and reshaped it to be able to exist within a growing movement of people and ideas. This is why the election victory was of such historic dimensions. It is why the Muscat government has the credentials and the necessary carte blanche to seek change by consultation, to introduce ideas by seeking to encourage others and to move ahead with positive measures by closely monitoring and keeping its own election proposals.
Simon Busuttil’s negativity is a source of concern, more so within his own party, for those many people of goodwill who believe in political and ideological diversity but not at the expense of the nation’s social and economic wellbeing. He still has time to change tactics and become, with Joseph Muscat and his team, a leading player in Malta’s 21st-century progress, but he has to stop stumbling into more displays of hide-and-seek.
Joseph Cuschieri is an MEP and Head of the PL Delegation in the S&D
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