Tag: campaigns

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Campaign 2013

Snapshot #1: Busuttil – the gaffer from Europe?

When the John Dalli musical chairs finally came to an end the Nationalist Party thought that it had found itself a new champion. Simon Busuttil, the new party deputy leader was supposed to help start lifting the party out of the doldrums and more importantly he was to be the projected face of change. This blog took all this with a pinch of salt and even after the other new addition from Europe (Grech) was added on the Labour side of the equation we remained cautiously observant for one simple reason. We did not take the “new style from Europe” as an automatic given.

Simon had taken to stressing his lack of experience in the local way of doing politics and was a ready accomplice in the implication that he had developed a “european” style of politics in his stint at the EP. At the time J’accuse stopped short of applauding and simply asked: Show me the money.

Well by now we can definitely say that the nationalist party has been short changed. From his first exhortation to the PN masses to take their message to the grocer’s (did someone mention the moonies) to the latest slip regarding Deborah Schembri’s supposedly nationalist face, Simon has betrayed a knack to slip incredibly on all sort of contrived bananas. There’s something more than these obvious warts underlying the former EP star’s foray into Maltese politics. His reported interventions are still straight out of the partisan textbook – an us and them approach peppered with the kind of style typical of PN politicians that has often attracted the “arrogant” label. If change was meant to be then Simon did not deliver.

What seems to be at work here is the effect of the chasm between Brussels and the various locations of PN’s Tined ta’ Djalogu (Dialogue Tents). As a friend put it, Simon is suffering from the effects of on-the-ground politics that is ever so different from the detached picture he could have received in his time in Brussels. The EP after all is an (important) talk-box that cannot afford to work on partisan lines in the same manner as our “winner takes all” politics does. Simon would have liked to reap the benefits of his success in the EP and bring them over to Malta but he ignored one important factor.

The EP ambience creates success stories of MEPs across the political spectrum. There is no “winner takes all” in the EP, rather there is an institution working in its interests and (sometimes) in the interests of those who elected its members. The mere fact that so many political formations are represented proportionally in the parliament obliges MEPs to engage in reasoned discussion on real issues. Simon left that fertile ground and mistakenly assumed that he could achieve similar results in the Maltese environment.

What he did find is the antagonistic bipartisan system engaged in yet another nihilistic electoral campaign. Auctions for gimmicks, personality clashes and the media wars leave little space for Simon to practice what he had appreciated and benefited from in a European environment. So Simon switched to his instinct. He may deny having been active in party politics before leaving for Europe (even though he claims to have written the 2008 manifesto and programme) but he managed to adapt very quickly back to the old style partisan style.

Once the sums are made up it will probably turn out that the PN’s Simon gambit has not really paid out. The direst verdict is on our political system – the fields in which our politicians are allowed to flourish – it has proven to be much tougher and much more resistant than any supposedly “European” style that could have been imported.

Once again the greater losers are the voters. That, at least, remains an immutable universal truth.

Categories
Campaign 2013

The queue as a political symbol

The queue has taken centre stage in what has been dubbed the “Battle of the Billboards”. This summertime kerfuffle is a mere taster of pleasures yet to come since the electoral campaign promises to be a concentration of superficial messages orchestrated in physical tweets plastered across the illegal billboards across the land. Writing in his Sunday column Mark Anthony Falzon repeated one of the mantras of this blog: that the two party system suffers when one (or worse, both) of the parties lowers its standards. We tend to call it the race to mediocrity and there is now ample proof that the political parties abdicate the reasoned approach to convincing voters in favour of the marketing-driven propagandist approach.

So while the Nationalist party is lost in its fixation with Dr Who-like time-travelling reminding us that New Labour is old hat, the Labour party revels in the comfort zone of tit-for-tat. It is a comfort zone that is devoid of propositions and mainly constructed around the eternal grudges of real or perceived faults. Which is where the queue comes in handy. The PN marketing team was surely on a tea break when they came up with the cut and past job of a poster 30 years young. There was the obvious omission of the “conservative” part but that was a minor issue when compared to the humungous gaffe of bringing “the queue” to the fore of the current political discourse.

One reason why the Saatchi & Saatchi poster worked back in 1979 was surely the fact that it focused on the anger that people had for the incumbent Labour government. The queue is a potent symbol of dissatisfaction. People queueing for unemployment benefits were a strong reminder of things that were not working. It was tangible. The queues were there for all to see. By contrast the nationalist billboard falls into a double trap. First of all the proof of Labour not working can only come with a Labour party in government. Is the nationalist party’s word still strong enough for the voter to believe it? Which brings me to the second part of the trap. It was child’s play for Labour to appropriate itself of the queue symbol and use it to strengthen its Mantra for the Disgruntled.

We got the queues for operations, for jobs, for education. You name it, Labour cloned it. Did it matter that most of the counter-billboards were factually incorrect? Not much. Labour was given a free ride to do what it does best – repeat the lie enough times to make it sound true. Or trueish. The counter-counter-spin cried Not Fair! But the damage had been done. The PN had introduced a demon that would be hard to get rid of. It was now forced into a corner of comparing PN 2012’s achievements to those of Labour circa 1984. Let’s face it… it is a comparison that does not hold water.

The PN would have done better trying to force the hand of Joseph Muscat to come down from his castle in the sky non-committal mode and try to focus its billboards on exposing the emptiness of New Labour – whoever is in the present line up. The fixation on the Karmenu Vellas and Alex Sciberras Trigonas of this world is beginning to turn stale. There seems to be no end of it though and the PN stables seem to be lost in the taste-driven marketing ploys that only just tipped the scales in 2008 (and let’s not forget the JPO factor in that particular round of elections).

Speaking of JPO, do not underestimate the effect of the uninvited return of Jason Micallef as an election candidate. Muscat risks having his own JPO within his stables – another cohabitation in the making – and Labour do have a habit of making such internecine squabbles turn ugly. We can expect various phases of this new relationship. First the very public reconciliation and the “all’s well that ends well” approach. Then the early post election phase we can call the “there’s daggers in men’s eyes” phase. Finally there will be the inevitable eruption when a possible PM  Muscat realises – as Gonzi did much to his chagrin – that you cannot keep everybody happy all the time.

What then? Then we can party like it’s 1979.

 

ADDENDUM:

Remember this from the late 80’s? The queue – a potent political symbol indeed. Music by Brown Rice for the legendary satirical programme “Aħn’aħna jew m’aħniex”…

Categories
Politics

The politics of serenity

I don’t know whether Carm Mifsud Bonnici has his own facebook account – though I know that he does blog on a regular basis. If he does have a facebook account – or if he did – it would be fitting if his current status read “serene”. He told reporters that felt serene both before and after the vote of confidence and this because he was prepared for every eventuality. Kudos to Carm Mifsud Bonnici who has opted to put on a brave display of cool, calm and a very Christian (democrat) form of zen. It is no coincidence that the emotional and physical behaviour of Mifsud Bonnici provide a stark contrast to the picture of a power hungry, angry and revengeful Franco Debono.

Joseph Muscat may have stressed the fact that this government (read the parliamentary group) remains divided and that no amount of confidence motions survived with the speaker’s vote or that of a recalcitrant Debono will improve the situation but the leader of the progressive movement may be missing the wood for the trees. The lack of political acumen in Labour is ever so glaringly obvious when they persist in error. The very rift that caused glee among labourite supporters and among those nationalists who are dying to spite GonziPN by seeing the end of it is the very foundation upon which the nationalist party’s potential revival is built upon.

How I hear you ask? Well to begin with the issue of the CMB motion was an eye opener of itself. Politics as it should be was nowhere to be seen. You may get the sweeping statements about the “unjust justice system” and you may have an opposition spokesman turning a list of grievances about the courts, the police and the laws into a show of unhappiness. What we did have in actual terms however was a bloodthirsty attack at the throat of an ex-Minister – for by the time the motion was presented (and amended into a call for resignation) that was what CMB had become.

If the subject of the motion had been the supposedly disastrous state of affairs in the justice ministry then the only resignation that should have been demanded – and a symbolic one at that – should have been of the Minister currently in charge of the portfolio. That would be Minister Chris Said. So many lessons of ministerial responsibility, collective responsibility, governmental responsibility had been given in press conferences and long-winded speeches that one would have expected this motion to be directed at the right person. But no.

And it is evident why not. Because politics and responsibility had nothing to do with this motion. Whether or not you agree with the ills that befell our justice and security systems in the past few years, your cause, your petita was not considered one bit. Instead – as has been widely documented – this was a vendetta. It was personal.

J’accuse has elsewhere complained about the use of certain terminology in politics. The martyr complex, the excessive descriptions of “suffering” and “hurt”. A large part of our voting masses reason in these terms. It is no crude calculation on the basis of policies but rather a complex build up of emotions where a partisan DNA struggles with feeling of entitlement, chips on the shoulder and some weird collective illusion that politicians suffer whenever they “serve” the people.

Carm Mifsud Bonnici’s serene acceptance of the inevitable outcome of the vendetta plot is no cup of hemlock. It is a rallying call. Strategically the moment of serenity is a necessary stroke of genius. Given that the political battle on a national level seems to have taken the direction of being fought out on the emotional rather than the factual fields then might as well take the cue early in this pre-election run. Mifsud Bonnici’s serenity comes out stronger when contrasted to the actions of his self-appointed nemesis Debono and that of the braying power-or-nothing pitchfork gang on the benches of the opposition.

We would have thought that exposing the absolute vacuum that is Labour’s sum total of projects and preparedness for its time in government would have been enough for PN to have a field day. On second thoughts and having seen the latest events unfold we cannot but applaud the emotional counter-moves that have begun to surface. If anything it will distract attention from the embarassing gaffes being committed in the social marketing field – better known as the mychoice.pn campaign.