The Joseph Muscat factor

Rumours keep swirling around of an early general election. The latest is that it may be held in November. Everybody keeps trying to guess-read the Prime Minister’s mind. The latest take isn’t too complimentary in the context of what I have termed Lawrence Gonzi’s self-respect in an earlier column. My reasoning then was simple.

Lawrence Gonzi has become much less than credible with the way he has made a mockery of parliamentary practice- Lino Spiteri

The government has been trying to avoid taking a vote which equates to one of confidence like the plague. But, duck and dodge as it may, it cannot avoid the fact that the Bill which brings into effect the 2012Budget has to be approved byMay 14.

The position will turn on how Nationalist backbencher MP Franco Debono will use his vote on that confidence bill in the context of the government’s one-seat majority. The MP has not budged from the harsh position he took on January 6 when, in the wake of the Prime Minsiter’s re-jigging of Cabinet, he made it abundantly clear thathe has no confidence in thegovernment as currentlyconstituted.

Rather, as the local elections meltdown forced Gonzi to soul-search and try to reach out to the people, Debono said, none too gently, I told you so. On present reading the likelihood is that, when the money bill comes to the vote by May 14, Debono will abstain. He’s done it once, on a motion of confidence in minister Austin Gatt. He is unlikely to feel any compunction in doing it again.

Should that happen, the Speaker, according to set practice, will give his casting votein favour of the situation remaining as it is, that is, for the government. The Prime Minister would survive to fight another day. Truth would be, however, that the situation would not remain as it is.

Gonzi would have lost face again, massively so. He has already done that since Debono went on his tough persuasive path, and in the local election.

He has become much less than credible with the way he has made a mockery of parliamentary practice to ensure that the House of Representatives does not take a vote, among other things on a motion of no-confidence in the Leader of the House whom Debono fiercely criticises.

My reading has been that in such circumstance the Prime Minister would not take long to advise the President to dissolve Parliament and set in motion the process towards an early general election, once the winter of his discontent cannot be made glorious summer.

I even tend to think that the President might feel inclined to have a tête-à-tête with the Prime Minister about the situation, but will refrain from going into that delicate zone.

By my book, Gonzi will show he has enough self-respect to make him face the inevitable. I have been branded naïve to think that there is much self-respect around; that the Prime Minister and Nationalist Party leader will grimly hang onuntil he is persuaded that his desperate charm offensive based on massaging the disgruntled through the power of incumbency will signal hope of another Nationalist victory.

Only Gonzi can show whether I am right or wrong. Meanwhile, whenever the general election is held the deciding element will be what I shall call the Joseph Muscat factor. The Nationalists have set the tone of their campaign. It is based on the fear factor yet again, with the Nationalist version of Labour’s past planted on Muscat’s back.

That is a PN must, for the fear factor alone will not work. Aside from the fact that it can be countered, a chunk of voters are young enough to feel that drumming it means that the Nationalists are afraid of fighting the election on today’s issues. They must, therefore, spin the fear factor to make it stick to Muscat.

That will contradict another strand of the Nationalist campaign – that Muscat is too young and inexperienced to be prime minister. But political campaigns, like dirt and praise, rarely contain too much logic.

On the Labour side there is a danger that they, too, will base their campaign on the Muscat factor, in a move resembling the now discredited GonziPN approach. Labour turns Muscat’s youthfulness into an advantage, stressing his freshness and modern way of seeing things.

The man himself seems to be well aware of the precariousness of Labour using him as their main prop. He does not lack confidence, not by any means. But he incessantly stresses that Labour’s strength lies in the quality of the team of candidates he is putting together.

The new element in that team might represent a problem. In any party those in situ do not take kindly to new faces shining more than theirs. The point is that Muscat does no project himself, but his team.

The efficacy of the team will be tested by how many newly elected MPs he will have at his disposal should he win and kicks off with his first Cabinet.

Meanwhile, back in the political jungle, the Nationalists will continue to demonise Muscat, combining the past with his youthfulness, while Labour will play him up as the great new hope, so new that not even the slightest touch of pink in a necktie is in sight.

No matter how much we criticise personality cults, they always build up around the leader. The biggest cults were built around Dom Mintoff and Eddie Fenech Adami, though it was only Gonzi who personally anointed himself as a cult, with the self-designed GonziPN brand that just about worked for the Nationalists in 2008.

I tend to think that the next time round the parties will face a more intelligent electorate, one more interested in issues than in personalities. But as with my belief in Gonzi’s self-respect it might be another issue on which I am proven wrong.