Tuesday evening was not a good time to be a Nationalist MP. As the members of the Nationalist parliamentary group walked out of the House after abstaining on the Civil Unions bill, they were loudly booed from the crowd which filled the square celebrating the enactment of the law.
As the Nationalist MPs walked out stiffly after Simon Busuttil, a rictus smile on their faces, you could see that they were stunned by the waves of disapproval coming their way from the members of the LGBT community waving rainbow flags in jubilation. Claudette Buttigieg, who has many close friends in the gay community, was said to have tears in her eyes.
Before the vote, Busuttil made a statement saying the Opposition was in favour of legislation introducing civil unions but had reservations about adoption of children by gay couples at this point in time. Since the two were being lumped together in one legislative bundle, the Opposition would be abstaining. And so they did – reinforcing the image of the PN as a political party without any clear direction in sight and which doesn’t stand for anything except against the Individual Investor Programme scheme.
The PN was wrong to make its members abstain. It exposed its leadership to charges of further fence-sitting. To date, Busuttil has not given a clear ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ reply on any of the hot potato issues, such as the spring hunting referendum or the illegal Armier development. More importantly, if Busuttil wanted to give a voice to the people who have reservations about the adoption of children by gay couples, he should have allowed a free vote.
In that manner, people would know what the views of their MPs are. Nationalist MPs, such as Claudette Buttigieg, who feel strongly about gay rights issues, would have been able to vote accordingly, as would MPs who feel we have to tread cautiously when dealing with this issue. Either way, voters would have been able to see that their elected representatives were reflecting their concern in the manner in which they voted. As it is, the PN’s position was a cop-out, neither here nor there, pleasing nobody and no-one.
The PN was wrong to make its members abstain. It exposed its leadership to charges of further fence-sitting
This not-meaning-anything ‘blah’ position reminds me of Margaret Thatcher saying that “standing in the middle of the road is very dangerous; you get knocked down by the traffic from both sides”. It also begs the question of what exactly the PN politicians are doing in Parliament if they are not voting to express the different concerns of the people who elected them – one way or another.
There are a host of reasons for the PN’s general aimlessness, but many stem from repeatedly picking the wrong battles to fight. Whether you simply adopt a common sense approach or if you’ve read Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, you’ll agree with the statement that “He who knows which battle he should engage in and which he should avoid, will win.” Engaging in resource-draining battles which are already a lost cause, will lead to a lack of morale and worse.
This is what the PN had done with the divorce issue. Lawrence Gonzi should never have opposed divorce, especially in view of the fact that separation was legal and widespread, and that divorce did not bring about any new social harm not brought about by separation. But the PN persisted, branding itself as the fusty-musty party opposing every liberal proposal. In doing so, it reduced its credibility on social issues and laid the field wide open for Joseph Muscat.
The Prime Minister may have been a Super One journalist but he is turning out to be a wily political strategist. He has taken certain positions – such as those on civil unions and the decriminalisation of drugs – which endear him to the liberal spectrum of Maltese society and which will not lose him many votes from the conservative sector. He may or may not personally feel very strongly in favour of these causes, but his espousal of them means that Labour has accumulated a huge bank of goodwill.
This allows Muscat to do his amount of fence-sitting on issues which require more than the stroke of a legislator’s pen – such as reining in unchecked development, illegal hunting, corruption and – in future – deciding about euthanasia and other ethically tricky questions.
These are the hard nuts to crack – problems which require resources and bring about the possibility of alienating votes. My guess is that Muscat will avoid these issues because he can afford to (in terms of losing votes).
Now if the PN is ever to be relevant again, it has to start taking a position on these important issues. And Busuttil should put Katy Perry’s Choose Your Battles on a loop. You know, the song which goes “Choose your battles babe/Then you’ll win the war”.
cl.bon@nextgen.net.mt