The citizen first...

Let's not beat about the bush. The facts are crystal clear: a 66 per cent turnout and a significant victory for the Labour Party. The local elections are causing great embarrassment to the Nationalist Party. The people are casting their votes or abstaining from participating in these ballots with one purpose in mind. They want to convey a message of personal disgruntlement, unhappiness and disappointment. Whether it is interpreted as a boycott to the elections, a protest vote or the floaters' eagerness for change is beyond comprehension.

One may concede that the final result reflects a mixture of the electorate's behaviour on local and national issues. It could also be that local polls are taking the shape of general elections' barometers accommodating the political parties. Whatever the conclusions we deduce in our various interpretations, the truth is that our citizens' major concern is their pockets. There are no national or local issues per se which influence our voting pattern, as long as these are not translated into a better quality of life and material benefits for the individual citizen. Decisions made in "the national interest" or "for the local community benefit" are irrelevant to the voters whose measurement of prosperity is based on whether they are living better off in terms of their own wealth generation, financial earnings and family standard of living.

We think that during the elections we face a basic choice of "left" versus "right" but that does not reflect the landscape of political thought. The real choice which the citizen is facing at the voting booth is between "collectivism", promoted by the political parties, and "individualism" propagated by the voter. Unfortunately, politicians focus on details of implementation policies, programmes and tax plans and ignore the fundamental issues which they used to talk about in "fundamental" terms long time ago. It is therefore not surprising that the citizen's reaction at elections is becoming less and less congruent with the politician's new way of doing politics.

Individualism holds that the individual is the primary unit of reality and the ultimate standard of value. It does not deny that societies exist and that people benefit from living in them but it sees society as a collection of individuals, not something over and above them.

Collectivism holds that the group, the nation, the community, is the primary unit of reality and the ultimate standard of value. It does not deny the reality of the individual. But it holds that one's identity is determined by the groups one interacts with. One's identity is constituted essentially of relationships with others.

The Nationalist Party's campaign was streamlined towards the extreme collectivist's approach. Their emphasis on the national achievements registered in the economic activity, investment opportunities, jobs creation; their pontificating about the overall statistical improvements in various sectors, together with their media over-exposure to convey the message that hard decisions were made in the "national interest" (such as reducing the deficit and imposing the fuel surcharge) prove my point.

On the other hand, the Labour Party's strategy targeted the individual in a more sensible way although their campaign could easily be classified under the moderate collectivist type. They put their emphasis on the electricity and water bill received at home rather than the increase of oil prices across the world. And it worked perfectly well as evidenced by the remarkable shift of votes in favour of Labour and the significant 34 per cent of eligible voters who decided to stay at home on election day.

The Prime Minister's optimism is based on the assumption that the national achievements have not yet reached the homes of the citizens. He also relies on the fact that it is still mid-term of this legislature and, in terms of effecting change, two years or so in politics has a time horizon much longer than one would imagine. But, surely, he is missing the point that fundamental issues are more important than the implementation details we hear about. Biex int tghix ahjar (So that you may lead a better life) was a wisely selected slogan targeting the individualists but it proved to be counter-productive since the citizen's reality is far from enjoying a better standard of living.

The Labour leader is perhaps more cautious in his risk calculations. He stresses that Labour's consecutive victories in the European and local council's elections had paved the way to ensure majority support in the next general election. His criticism is levelled towards an aging government that is detached from John Citizen and that is stretching its sell-by date. He is advocating better governance and is already revealing his party's popular proposals on issues that might sound pleasant music to the voters' ears.

But, again, the individualist knows how to make his own calculations. It is rather confusing to outrightly declare that once in power you would reduce the water and electricity tariffs when at the same time you commit yourself to carry out an impact assessment and when there are so many unknown factors which you would have to consider before making the right decisions. The staunch party supporter may digest half-baked proposals but the individualist citizen would only accept concrete plans that confront reality.

Talking of reality, it all boils down to the "individual" reality. The achievements or failures which we experience on a national level are measured on the basis of their impact on our pockets. Capital projects and roads infrastructure do not contribute towards the feel-good factor as much as the lifestyle we enjoy and the affordability of our own spending power.

Our politicians must realise that it is not anymore a question of "left" or "right". They have to address these fundamental issues in order to raise the level of abstraction of their political discourse to a higher level. Eventually these will be the real issues which would determine the outcome of the next general election. It all depends whether "individualism" will gather momentum in the next two years and whether it leaves a tremendous impact on the range of implementation details considered by the electorate from now on and until the general election.

manuelmicallef@onvol.net