Can the PN gain without pain?

The results of the local council elections last weekend have confirmed that the Nationalist Party is at its lowest approval rating since the 1950s. I do not intend to analyse these results as such, more so as there are different situations in the different localities where the elections were held; but looking at the results in their totality should leave no doubt at all that the current perception of the PN is very negative.

Does the PN need to suffer some short term pain to regain its meaningfulness?- Michael Falzon

What comes across all over the country is that the large majority of dissatisfied PN voters have chosen absenteeism as the way to vent their frustration. The so-called ‘new political landscape’ seems to be more a case of desertification ravaging the PN’s territory than the discovery of pastures new.

Acquiescent PN supporters tend to dismiss the current situation in which their party finds itself simply as the result of its being in power for almost all of the past 24 years. The truth is more complex.

It is a fact that in the next general election, all voters below 30 will have had no direct experience of the Mintoff years; and capitalising on the fear of past events (as the PN often likes to do) will not work with them. I always see a parallel between this ploy and my mother’s efforts at persuading her children not to waste food by recalling the scarcity of food during World War II – something that kids of my age had not experienced. It never worked, of course.

There are other telling factors. The percentage of Labour voters who stick to their party, whatever the circumstances, is much bigger than that in the case of PN voters who are more discerning and expect higher standards of behaviour from their party in government.

The Labour Party gets away with murder (sometimes literally) with its loyal supporters while the PN is always at pains to score points with its supporters. But this has been so ever since Labour replaced the Constitutionals as the PN’s main political adversary.

On Sunday, the Prime Minister went on record saying that the PN needs a lot of work to make amends with the people. Translate this into ‘amends with its own voters’ and you will immediately realise the predicament the Prime Minister finds himself in.

Four years into an administration that gained power by the slightest of majorities, one would expect a Prime Minister to have overcome the uphill struggles and be coasting towards a good performance at the polls, if not a projected victory. The fact that this is hardly the current situation speaks volumes.

So is Lawrence Gonzi for turning? Can he manage to pull off a miracle in the little time that is left before the general election? Is all that the PN needs to regain its popularity at the polls simply a flood of efforts to assuage the personal gripes of so many: a veritable deluge of pjaċiri?

I seriously doubt it. Helping voters in extraordinary ways in the months leading to an election – the power of incumbency, as Alfred Sant once put it – has always been the norm, whichever party was in power. Yet governments are known to have lost elections.

This time round, there are too many people with serious objections to the way the country has been governed and who will not be swayed by the odd nudge.

Many have felt frustrated by the bureaucracy that has been allowed to flourish unchecked within the government apparatus. I doubt whether there is any department or state entity where someone has not invented an arbitrary rule or procedure that serves to rile the citizen rather than to increase the efficiency of government… and ministers have allowed this to take place under their very noses for far too long.

At long last, the Prime Minister last Sunday publicly acknowledged that this has happened; but can he now reverse the trend? A civil service sensing a weak government that is destined to lose the election will automatically resist all pressures for it to change its ways. The civil service has a life of its own, independent of its political masters, and history shows that in such circumstances it abets the winning bandwagon, consciously or unconsciously.

Perhaps we can take a lesson from history. After its electoral loss in 1971, the PN rebuilt itself inspired by those who sensed the party needed a new vision and purpose. Censu Tabone, who died last Wednesday, was one of these genuine party men without whom that comeback could not happen. The PN and Malta owe a lot to them.

In the current scenario, an intriguing question therefore crops up: if the PN again manages to hold on to power would this be a positive development for Malta and for the PN, from a historical perspective?

Does the PN need to suffer some short term pain to regain its meaningfulness: an inspirational positive reason for being while practising what it believes in – rather than presenting itself as the only alternative to ‘doom’ under Labour?

micfal@maltanet.net