Spin is the name of the political game. It is a revamped and much more sophisticated version of old type propaganda. It is practised the world over. Malta is no laggard. Currently a classical case of modern spin is being practised by the Nationalist Party. At its heart lies the funeral of former Labour leader Dom Mintoff.
The net praise showered on the former Labour leader from near and far had unexpected political fallout- Lino Spiteri
Mintoff had set a precedent by giving George Borg Olivier a state funeral, so the Government was more or less obliged to give such a funeral to the former Labour Prime Minister. It turned out that the funeral had far more repercussions than expected. The old man, whose long career had included not a few mistakes along with a lot of achievement, had been pilloried in his political lifetime, which ended in 1998 and little less so since then.
A large constant section of the old Nationalist Party saw him as the devil incarnate. A diminishing section of the Labour Party would not forgive his manoeuvring in 1997/1998 which led to Alfred Sant calling an out of season general election, losing it heavily. In death Mintoff was rehabilitated.
What came to the fore, as epitomised in Eddie Fenech Adami’s words, was his net positive contribution, though some of his methods continued to jar.
The net praise showered on the former Labour leader from near and far had unexpected political fallout. It propelled Joseph Muscat’s modernising Labour Party into a better light that it had over the past four and a half years.
That realisation made the slick Nationalist spin machine, now run more fervently by Richard Cachia Caruana who has time on his hands, spring into action to counter the positive fallout. The objective was brutally simple – rubbish the Labour Party more than ever before.
To do that, first of all Fenech Adami was berated for his statesmanlike appraisal of Mintoff. Then the machine was let lose to project the man in the worst terms possible, picking on his shortcomings to try to make them out to be more than his positive side and the successes it yielded.
Lawrence Gonzi, partisan Nationalist leader before Prime Minister of the whole country, tried to set the tone. He created a shameless misinterpretation of an article by Prof. Edward Scicluna, a respected economist, currently a Labour MEP and a Labour candidate at the next general election.
With his know-it-all brashness and sideway leer, Gonzi claimed that Scicluna wanted to take Malta back to the time when Mintoff imposed import controls. The spin lay in the image of Maltese economic pilgrims buying toothpaste and chocolate from Sicily. Gonzi was less than fair to Mintoff.
Mintoff’s import substitution, infant industry policy is seen by objective economists in its historical context. At the time Malta was trying to restructure away from dependence on the British military base.
Among other efforts Mintoff resorted to an accepted economic policy of controls to bring about import substitution by infant industries set up to exploit a captive market. Mintoff’s mistake lay in ignoring the fact that Malta’s market was too small for that proven policy.
He compensated by giving a tremendous boost to manufacturing for export, particularly by German firms, and by boosting tourism in the context of admirable growth in the tourism structure.
Gonzi, briefed to a tee by his spinners, ignored all that, as did his political acolytes parroting the theme. He also demonstrated a queer lack of knowledge about his party’s own history.
It was not Mintoff, but a Nationalist Government that introduced import substitution in Malta. It did so in the early 1960s, when a large jeans factory was set up. The factory aimed for exports and hardly needed the domestic market. But, to aid it, the Nationalist Government of the time barred the importation of jeans.
The Nationalist spinners do their best to hide that fact and Gonzi plays along in nonchalant political dishonesty.
The Nationalist spin goes further than that. One after the other Nationalist acolytes step up to remind the faithful of incidents which occurred under Labour and of the GWU’s allegedly acquiescent role at the time. Anything but the historical reality in which Mintoff governed.
The spin is centred on negative propaganda. An example of that line is being given by the Republicans in the US as they continue with their negative mission of trying to destroy President Barack Obama and all the progress he stands for. They were put in their place through a brilliant speech by former President Bill Clinton. But Republican negativism will not stop.
Nor will Nationalist negative spin and scaremongering stop. Labour’s response to that could be to reply in kind. It is negative enough in reacting to all that the Nationalist Government does, mistakenly moving away from Muscat’s early stance of recognising the good and criticising the perceived bad. But it has not really delved into the Nationalist past to counter scare with scare.
Labour might argue that it does not need to do so – the present contains enough targets to attack, not least the mounting public debt burden which should be scaring little children, let alone mature adults. That is the right attitude. It would be a pity if spin succeeds in merely focusing the general election about the past.
Elections are about the future, particularly about the ability to manage the modern economy, with all its opportunities and dangers.
In that regard Gonzi spins another line – only he can manage, so mushy that he has bad economic dreams about the possibility of Labour replacing him.
Such bigheadedness is not appropriate. To demonstrate that, Labour has to convince that it can harness, increase and mobilise Malta’s resources better than the Nationalists have done so far.