I feel sorry for the people in charge of the pan-European information campaign for the European Parliament elections. There they are valiantly struggling to show potential voters in different countries that the European Parliament may be of some relevance to their daily lives. They've come up with some pretty creative ways to drive home the point that this is a campaign about European issues and not a fun-sized version of national elections.
Down at the Sliema strand they've set up mock fortifications and a leafy border to try and get a healthy debate going as to which kind of borders we'd like to have. Elsewhere in the print media, they've had adverts with different energy icons to get us thinking about possible energy sources. It's an attractive campaign, trying to convey the message that this is a non-partisan election. Unfortunately, it's being completely swamped by the campaigns of the Nationalist and Labour parties.
Both the major parties will have no truck with this new-fangled, non-confrontational way of doing things. As far as they're concerned, an election is an election and they'll conduct the campaign as they have always done - in the tried-and-tested method of keeping their campaign partisan, based exclusively on local issues, and mostly based on attacking the opposition. Look at the parties' billboard campaigns and their newspaper advertisements. You can hardly spot the difference between them and the ones used in the last national election.
Take the first 'negative' Nationalist Party billboard - the one plonked right in front of the fortifications-and-leafy border installation. It features the current crop of Labour MEP candidates as the fruit of a tree with roots growing out of the faces of former Labour leaders including Dom Mintoff and Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici. Set against a murky red background, it's very similar to the billboard used in the general election, showing 'old Labour' faces. Quite clearly, the idea behind the billboard is that the Labour candidates are more of the same. They're as Europhobic as their previous leaders and their candidature is simply an opportunistic ploy - jumping on the EU bandwagon because they can't do otherwise. Well, that's the implication anyway.
Even though you can't conceivably lump people like Louis Grech and Edward Scicluna in the same rabidly anti-EU bag as some others, there they are. Then there's also the fact that not all the candidates in the Nationalist line-up were militating within its ranks for EU accession back in 1996. If the PN welcomes those who have changed their minds about the EU and VAT, it will have to concede that squealing about Labour U-turns on the matter, is hypocritical.
Me, I think that the billboard campaign is just an opportunity to stick up a photo of Dom Mintoff to frighten away the people who remember the 1980s as being a bleak period in Malta's history. It works (very well) on an emotional level and that's it - there's no attempt to bring in the European aspect of these elections.
The same thinking is behind the PN newspaper adverts with pictures of the Labour deputy leaders Toni Abela and Anglu Farrugia flanking Joseph Muscat. The two aren't at the centre of the EP campaign but their photos - that of 'old Labour' stalwarts - will distract people from the team of MEP candidates who are contesting for the Labour Party. With this poster, we're back on well-trodden territory - negative campaigning. It's as effective a method of campaigning as any, as can be seen by its use even in the Czech Republic. Here the Civic Democrats have put up a billboard featuring political opponents with the slogan, "My programme: To do harm and scaremonger". It's very much like the 'Prophets of Gloom' moniker given to the Labour Party leadership by the PN media in order to try and neutralise the aspirational twist which the Labour Party is after.
The Labour Party is also conducting this campaign as if the keys to Castille were up for grabs and not five or six seats in the European Parliament. From what I can see, a good part of the party's campaign is focused on the water and electricity bills and the spiralling cost of living.
While not denying that these are major concerns for a large swathe of the population, it's practically impossible to see what immediate connection our bills have to the European Parliament. What can Labour MEPs in Brussels do to have them lowered? Get Jose Manuel Barroso to scold Lawrence Gonzi? The emphasis on issues which fall within the national government's competence - and not that of the EP - may make sense if it is intended to elicit a protest vote - but for little else.
Of course, the Labour Party exponents could argue that their representatives in the EP would be working on initiatives, projects and legislation to promote renewable energy sources and a subsequent easing off of utility rates, but this is a long-term process and they're not framing the argument in this way. The argument, which is being drummed home, is that the PN government is the cause of the shock bills, and the upcoming election is a good opportunity to show one's dissent. As with the PN's electoral slogan promising to create more jobs for us, the water and electricity bills issue has a tenuous connection with the EP at best. The PN and PL's insistence on sticking to local issues will not have a negative effect on voter turnout. I'd say that it is the furiously partisan and divisive nature of local electoral campaigns that translates into exceedingly high turnout. Having been egged on and whipped up into a frenzy of aggression for the duration of the campaign, voters will troop down to the polling booths as usual. And the result will not be a reflection of our interest in EU matters as our response to the traditional campaigns.
cl.bon@nextgen.net.mt