Mixing local with national

If anybody can be accused of having mixed national issues with the local dimension, which the recent round of local elections should have had, it is none other than the Nationalist Party.

A mere throwback to the run-up to the campaign show that the PN was so determined to retain its relative majority in this predominantly Nationalist-leaning set of localities that it mobilised all the government resources it could, announcing a different project every day, and even using a particular ministry - that of Urban Affairs - to send out mailshots to the residents of Qui-si-sana only days before the elections.

There is much documented evidence to show that things went haywire for the Nationalists, and way beyond their own predictions and expectations.

While Health Minister Louis Deguara admitted that the PN's defeat was far worse than that expected by PN officials, party secretary-general Joe Saliba had gone on record during the campaign by saying that the Nationalist Party planned to retain the same number of elected councillors in these particular localities as it had done three years ago.

The PN not only lost its majority in traditional strongholds like San Gwann, Msida and Pietà, but the scare-mongering and demonising campaign it conducted against Rabat's Labour mayor proved counter-productive. As was the case of the mailshots sent out by a parliamentary secretary whose electoral base is Rabat, singing the praises of his brother, who ended up seeing his total amount of first preference votes slashed by even more than half.

With all these considerations in mind, I feel mystified how my colleague Dr Carmelo Mifsud Bonnici, who is ironically responsible for local councils at parliamentary secretary level, actually said that as a result of these local elections "Labour continued weakening itself".

During the first post-mortem session of the Nationalist executive, party leader Lawrence Gonzi is reported to have called on those present to "stand by me". Such a call should have gone out to the general electorate rather than to party apparatchiks.

Judging by recent statements made by the Prime Minister, although he initially claimed that he was prepared to listen to the electorate's message, he was the first to change tack and try to diminish the impact of the result by claiming that it was not the end of the world!

One moment he claimed that he was prepared to listen more attentively to the messages sent out by the electorate - as he had done at the end of last year's local elections as well as when the results of the European Parliament election were out, only for him now to decry 'the fact' that people should not take EU membership for granted and that the government had lobbied hard to make a success of it.

Dr Gonzi was reported to have stated that he became worried when he heard people taking for granted the 'opportunities' that had been created as a result of accession, which included increased choice and rights for consumers, as well as opportunities for students and workers, and new investment.

The panic mode that the Nationalists are in was evident when Dr Simon Busuttil, MEP - who should know better - tried to instil artificial and nonsensical fears among the electorate by asking: "Do we have a guarantee that the Labour Party will not take Malta out of the EU if returned to power?"

Whether the Nationalists will treat the recent result as a wake-up call and/or a reality check is up to them to decide, but I doubt whether they have the humility to give evident signs of having learned their lesson. The ball is entirely in their court.

If they think that they can swing the electorate their way merely by focusing on new roads and income tax reduction while continuing to administer with the same sense of arrogance and indifference as they have done so far, they must be sorely mistaken.

I do not know whether any internal results analysis will be commissioned by the PN as it was after the European Parliament election of 2004 but I think that the lessons are so evident and clear that they do not need to rely on gurus as they did in 2004 - who incidentally included senior government officials - to discover what led to their sad fate and predicament.

Some PN apologists have tried to give the impression that it would be a mistake to interpret local elections on a national scale.

The abstention level might point that way but then if the Nationalists intend to fight future local elections purely on a local level, they should keep the central government out of the campaign, leaving it up to the parties to fight it out purely on the basis of the performance or non-performance of the individual local councils.

It is not true that the Nationalists failed because they had a poor information strategy. After all, it was their Euro Parliament election result analysis that had pointed out something we had all long known, mainly that they traditionally have the backing of the so-called 'independent' media and the state-owned broadcasting station PBS during such campaigns.

What the Nationalists lack more than anything else is the sensitivity one would expect when dealing with the electorate.

This was made evident in a poll conducted by The Sunday Times last week, which showed, in the words of the sociologist who carried it out, that when introducing certain 'reforms' the Nationalists were planning measures whose social impact was not researched enough.

No wonder he concluded that "they might of course make sense from a purely accounting point of view, but the almost total rejection of them, as amply documented in this study, suggests that a return to the drawing board is necessary".

This is also evident in most other areas too.

leo.brincat@gov.mt

Leo Brincat is the Shadow Minister of Foreign Affairs and IT.