One thing is for sure: Prime Minister and Labour Party Leader Joseph Muscat will lead his party in solid form come next general election in a few months’ time and with the luxury of a dysfunctional and fragmented Opposition.
The Opposition is not just the Nationalist Party. It surely is the greater part of the whole, but it should have realised, by now, that it cannot topple the Labour government on its own. Not with its baggage and certainly not with its tactics.
The opposition to the style of politics currently adopted by Prime Minister Joseph Muscat is also coming from the smaller parties, namely Alternattiva Demokratika and the new Partit Demokratiku set up by former PL MP Marlene Farrugia. It also includes NGOs, particularly those keen on the environment, but not just. Columnists, bloggers and social media pundits are cropping out of nowhere all voicing their concern on the state of our democracy, dwindling of good governance practices and the growing elite, close to Castille, who seem to be gobbling public assets as if there’s no tomorrow. However, all these voices are instruments playing together out of tune.
Unless those opposing Joseph Muscat’s grip on public land and money unite to pressure him to let go of his closest allies within his executive, the Prime Minister will continue to run roughshod and seek another mandate to keep on governing exactly as he is. Konrad Mizzi will gain a mandate to open up more companies in secretive jurisdictions, in which to put commissions, as he himself declared with Mossack Fonseca. Keith Schembri will again be Chief of Staff, while retaining commercial interests and brushing with big business, and so will most Ministers, Parliamentary Secretaries, persons of trust, political appointees and civil service officials carry on to emulate their masters in their latest capitalist ideology that engulfed the once glorious Boffa’s Labour Party.
This week’s effective flash-mob by the left-wing Moviment Graffiti goes to show how fragmented the opposition to Muscat is. There goes a small group of youngsters who stuck to their guns in defending the lower ends of society and the environment, be it the PN or PL in power. They defied Minister Konrad Mizzi right in front of a Labour audience and in full live coverage on Facebook. They risked their own safety by putting Labour’s diehards to test. Thankfully, those present kept their cool.
It is now high time for all those opposing Joseph Muscat’s style of politics to unite under one movement and tell the Prime Minister to change what needs to be changed. It is imperative for all those who believe in good governance to stand up together and tell big business that a serious movement opposing their grand plans to grab public land and make astronomical profits while paying only a pittance into public coffers is alive and kicking.
Those who have the Prime Minister’s ear, in the safe illusion of their realm, thinking that Labour will be in power for as long as their appetite will last, need to feel discomfort and change their bullying tactics.
On the other hand, the PN needs to recharge its moral authority and come clean after it exposed itself to have slept with business owners who funded their political activities through its commercial arm - Media.Link. None of those opposing Joseph Muscat’s style of politics will find it comfortable to associate themselves to a party that is cosy with big business as much as the governing party is.
It is time for Simon Busuttil and his MPs, such as Jason Azzopardi, to stop chasing small fry out of sheer bitterness for switching to Labour and concentrate on offering an honest apology to the electorate for its past and recent mistakes. If the PN thinks that it will end up in power by default, they should think again, because the likes of Joseph Muscat will not go away unless there’s a concentrated effort by all those opposing his style of politics.
For all opposing sectors of society to rally around the biggest opposing party, the PN needs to regenerate itself and come clean on all fronts. The setting up of an advisory commission on party financing to be led by Judge Giovanni Bonello is a step in the right direction, but the PN needs to commit itself, from the onset, to adopt the findings of this report irrespective of the commercial consequences such may bring. Otherwise, the electorate will not see any significant difference between the two main leaders and will stick to the safest under present circumstances.