Many, myself included, did not notice that in the House of Representatives the other week, there were two votes on two different laws concerning gays at the Third Reading stage.
One was the law giving legal recognition to civil unions, including unions by same-sex partners, and the other law was an amendment to the Constitution so that discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation would become a breach of the Constitution.
The PN notoriously abstained on one because it objected to a particular clause giving same-sex couples the possibility to adopt as a couple. Perhaps, Simon Busuttil did not realise that while political groups deciding to abstain on particular motions in the European Parliament is a frequent enough occurrence, such a course of action by the Opposition ‘en masse’ was unheard of in Malta.
The vote in favour on the other law was hardly unexpected, considering that the constitutional change was originally proposed by Opposition MP Claudette Buttigieg.
As a result of the shrewd thinking behind the decision to put both votes during the same sitting, out there, nobody knows about the PN’s involvement in the constitutional change while everybody rants about the Opposition refraining to take a stand on civil unions. In one move, Joseph Muscat stole the kudos – on the constitutional amendment – that should have been the PN’s, and simultaneously put it in a very bad light with the gay community.
Way back in February 2011, when the PN executive was about to decide on the party’s position on divorce, in a contribution to this newspaper (‘Opportunity beckons for the PN’) I had written that the PN was facing both an opportunity and a huge threat: “The opportunity is for the PN to confirm its openness and keep liberals who favour divorce still within its fold.” While the threat was that if “the PN opts to be emotional and irrational, it faces the prospect of a meltdown, handing power on a plate to an inexperienced Joseph Muscat”, adding that as far as I could see, the PN was “going down this ill-fated road”. Alas, this was exactly what the PN executive opted for.
In that same article, I had referred to a book published by the Institute of Economic Affairs in Britain in 1997: Beyond Left and Right, in which academics John Blundell and Brian Gosschalk argued that the popular ‘shorthand’ descriptions of left and right used for political parties and voters leave a lot to be desired.
I had also pointed out that Blundell and Gosschalk had found that across democratic countries, 15 to 20 per cent of the electorate would be liberal, while up to 35 per cent would be conservative. I argued also that the number of people who vote PN in general elections but do not bother to vote in other elections gives an inkling of the number of PN voters who do not identify themselves totally with the party: this is some 40,000 voters out of 140,000 – 30 per cent of the PN’s share of the vote or 15 per cent of the electorate.
Relying only on the conservative vote would therefore relegate the PN to a perpetual minority situation with the support of about 35 per cent of the electorate.
By now it should have dawned on everyone in the PN – even its most conservative and confessional exponents – that the party will never regain power if it keeps on alienating what used to be its liberal wing. And it should also have dawned on the PN leadership that Muscat has a shrewd strategy to provoke the PN to keep alienating that vital minority.
In this context, Busuttil’s boast, that he avoided splitting the Opposition vote as Muscat desired is, at best, a Pyrrhic victory; while his argument that Muscat chose confrontation, is essentially correct but naïve. Why should Muscat choose otherwise if he is given the opportunity of driving wedges between the two factions of the PN? This is the way the game is played – not just in Malta but in all democratic countries where political parties fight tooth and nail to achieve dominance over each other.
The PN will never regain power if it keeps on alienating what used to be its liberal wing
Muscat has the luxury of being elected Prime Minister with an unprecedented landslide, and those within the Labour Party who flinch at divorce and same-sex unions have no muscle to stop him. He will therefore keep on pressing with his liberal agenda, for which read his strategy to see the PN being permanently denied of the liberal vote. So far he is not doing badly!
After gay adoption, what’s next? Probably the decriminalisation of drugs for personal use, about which the PN has opted to tread carefully by saying nothing. Then it could be indiscriminate IVF, surrogacy and whatever. More than treading carefully, the PN leadership should don their thinking caps and start plotting a counter strategy. It will not be easy, but it is crucial.
To avoid the catastrophe of dooming the PN to be permanently reduced to a minority party, they must realise that the long-term implications of Muscat’s divide-and rule strategy are much more critical than the ‘amicable’ resolutions of the internal bickering that still plagues the PN.
micfal@maltanet.net