J'accuse : Pater nunquam

Paul Borg Olivier has told the Nationalist Party General Council that the Nationalist Party remains “the party that proposes values without imposing them”. Take some time to chew on that one. Meanwhile, top guest on Xarabank, Joseph Muscat, regaled us with another assertion of Labour’s non-policy on divorce. Labour too, it seems, is not into the “imposing business” and it plans to do this by: (a) still not having a party policy on divorce (b) respecting the people’s choice and (contemporaneously) (c) allowing its MPs to vote as they damn well like. Still chewing?

Sometime last weekend I gave up trying to understand the Maltese voter and his priorities. I may have a (not too modest idea) or two about “prescriptive politics” and how a party ought to be run − together with the obvious corollaries of how a voter ought to vote. I am comfortable and, I do not hesitate to add, suitably trained to understand the constitutional implications of the role of values in representative politics. But the gap between informed opinion and voter instinct is as wide as ever.

What I cannot by any standard fathom is how, after these two separate announcements on Friday evening, Facebook (that inaccurate gauge of popular feeling) is populated with fawning subjects of either kingdom in our political spectrum. Over the last week we saw the two main parties pull off a great con (successfully I would say) and monopolise their corner of “new liberalism”. In their own way the PLPN politicians are grooming the voter to believe that he can still feel comfortable under their umbrella (the Umbrella Party survived the divorce scare) and by gosh are we swallowing the bait… hook, line and sinker.

Value-less

You would have thought − for even a fleeting second − that a party does not simply “propose values” but actually is a guarantee for a set of values. Borg Olivier’s reasoning is, I am sorry to say, a coward’s way out. Or a populist’s. It allows a party like the PN to shed its value-based backbone in favour of a variety of propositions. It’s the “anything goes so long as the people who elect us will it” solution. Nice. What use the rhetoric of a party position? Why bother anyway if the MPs elected on your ticket will simply follow the flow at the end of the day?

Muscat’s reasoning is only ever so slightly different. His party fence-sat the pre-referendum stage. Once “the people” had spoken and once “the people” could shoulder the responsibility, he moves into phase two − “my MPs OUGHT to vote yes”. Even in this fence-sitting stage Muscat cannot bring his party to take a solid position. Not even with the “people have spoken” business can he oblige all his members to vote yes (or abstain). Why bother?

The first survey on voting trends after the referendum shows Alternattiva Demokratika down a few points. This was the most shocking result to my mind. Shocking because I cannot understand how someone answering a survey (no electoral commitment here − how about using it for a tbeżbiża?) does not use the opportunity to show the value-less parties just how he could switch to a different option that was clear about its position from the start.

I can afford to be shocked at the voter. I can even afford to blame him. I can do that because I do not contest the election as a party. Alternattiva Demokratika cannot. They have to read the writing on the wall. They are obliged to do their homework from now and ask themselves how come, notwithstanding all the newfound exposure in the new media and old during the referendum, so few people view them as a viable alternative. The answers they find may be even more shocking than they think.

Clue-less

The absorption of a budding liberal civil rights movement into the fold of the two Liquorice Allsorts parties probably means that we will have to make do with bipartisan foot-shuffling and pussy-footing for some time yet. That deal is now reinforced with the abdication from representative value politics by the parties, in exchange for this populist knee-jerk vision. It does not bode well. When Eddie Fenech Adami went on radio and spoke of the dangers of relativism to a political party you could not agree with him more.

Come next election the voter will be clueless as to who or what he is electing to represent him. Muscat will write his manifesto as he goes along and Borg Olivier will be busy “proposing values” without the intention of “imposing them”. Whether another JPO will be lurking in the back of one of our ballot sheets − happy with the idea that whatever party he is representing never really asked him if he had any “private” ideas for a bill − will be anybody’s guess. Chances are that barring a “tkaxkira” of four seat majority proportions, any group of private minded newly-elected MPs could decide to embark on a bit of Pullicino Orlando politics of their own. Who’s the Kingmaker now?

Father-less

The amazing tricks our politicians can pull mean that in a short period of time it will be business as usual. “Se vogliamo che tutto cambi bisogna che tutto rimanga lo stesso”. “Issues” that require a key code of values for solving will not suddenly vanish though. From IVF to the management of transport on the islands to marriage for same sex couples, there is much more on the agenda. Each of these issues would normally require a clear position. They will of course find politicians to “mother” them − and probably from both sides of the House. What remains to be seen is whether this modus operandi, where laws are mothered through Parliament by ad hoc coalitions while they are left fatherless by the parties who should have left their stamp one way or another, will actually work.

Elsewhere on the island it has been shocking to see that as Valletta gears up to becoming European cultural capital, vandals struck at the freshly unveiled monument in Bisazza Street. The biggest news on the continent, apart from the spread of the E.coli scares, remains the perilous state of affairs in Greece. Depending on what press you read, you could expect anything from a new “Lehmann Brothers for Europe” to the “possible death of the EU”. It’s a tough one to call − let’s hope our parliamentarians will not be caught bickering over their latest value shift if the economic repercussions head our way… if they’re anywhere near Parliament that is.

www.akkuza.com will be coming to you from an event filled week in Malta. Happy Father’s Day to all dads (this time I got the week right). Pierre Mejlak’s new book is out on Wednesday and I am glad that the launch will happily coincide with my latest escapade to Malta. After I finished typing this article PM Lawrence Gonzi described PN’s politics as a “rainbow of options” − so there you have it: Mater semper certa est, pater nunquam.