In his latest rebranding exercise of himself, this time as a forward-looking go-getter, Prime Minister Joseph Muscat chose to call himself an “incurable optimist”. Like the other buzzwords that came before, this sudden abundance of optimism of his is as hollow as the ‘tagħna lkoll’ and the ‘positive energy’ slogans.
Admittedly, putting on a brave, smiling face goes some way in helping to keep the party morale up and business sentiment going and one may also be inclined to agree to Muscat’s claim to being ‘incurable’.
With the Labour Party ideologically corrupted beyond redemption, Muscat had little to offer his party’s delegates at their recent general conference other than his own personality cult, which does not seem to wane, despite the repeated blunders.
To press the point home among his adoring delegates, Muscat even brought up the latest convert to his growing cult, former Nationalist Party mayor Ian Castaldi Paris. This latter-day turncoat told the conference that their leader was “ready to take off his prime ministerial mantle and act like a father, a brother and a friend who really listens to you”.
The crowd loved it and Castaldi Paris got a standing ovation for that. He now joins the list of PN rejects, whom Labour embraces without any difficulty because it has no principles, no values and no ideology to fall back upon. The more the merrier, when you are just out to please the mob.
Muscat is following exactly in the footsteps of his predecessor, the great salvatur Dom Mintoff. Where Muscat lacks in depth and ideology he makes up through presentation. And, incredibly, despite the successive mess-ups of his administration, he rises above it all and emerges virtually untainted. That sleek is his image or that low is public expectation.
There are three main reasons for his runaway success: the economy, despite the cracks, still appears to be going strong; every government policy is populist at heart, and each decision has voter impact in mind; and, third, Muscat has an innate ability in keeping his fingers on the country’s pulse. He knows exactly how to speak to the hordes that gave him their vote – and that’s through their pockets.
The results of a survey conducted by InsightPolls last month lists personal income, at 27 per cent, as the main concern of respondents. Incredibly, immigration came second at 17 per cent in the list of ‘personal concerns’ and first in the list of ‘national concerns’ with 39 per cent.
Muscat knows what sort of audience he needs to cater for to keep him in power.
They are what he recently branded as ‘kitchen economists’ – people who, he said, did not get their degree from university (they wouldn’t vote for him if they did) but who read the signs of the economy from the “product prices in grocery stores”. Surely this must be a rehash of Mintoff’s corned beef price index.
The Prime Minister’s kitchen economists are his main voter base because they are the kind of people who fail to see beyond their nose. They readily fall for his gimmicks in the form of government handouts, be it fuel price cuts, VAT refunds, selective power outage compensation or energy bill cuts from a phantom power plant, not realising it all comes from their taxes.
Mintoff treated his people very much the same way. He spoke to them like they were idiots, threw crumbs at them and they loved him for it. Muscat must have been imitating his predecessor when he addresses his supporters at the start of the Labour conference.
There lies its voter base, people who want preferential treatment and a renegotiation of every environmental and planning rule
According to Muscat, who not so long ago led the isolationist brigade against EU membership, people in Malta tend to live in isolation and not realise the effects of international events on their lives.
He was obviously trying to wriggle his way out of the failed hedging system, another blunder by his Energy Minister who, despite repeated assurances that the hedging worked best, ended up reducing fuel prices with promises of even more cuts in the future.
It served Labour right that it came out bruised from this whole hedging affair.
It truly insults the intelligence that a government takes advantage of its monopoly in the energy sector to play around with fuel prices and win political points by pretending that falling fuel prices were the result of its benevolence to the electorate.
The winner in this hedging debacle was the Nationalist Party, not because it won the argument on hedging but because it took the battle to Labour’s home turf – the people’s pockets. It is a saddening fact that money in the pocket is the only issue that counts when you have an electorate that is so shallow and politically immature.
In taking the high moral ground in the face of the government’s amoral and populist policies, the PN is not winning any votes, inversely. Criticism of the government’s amnesty to people who tampered with smart meters, the proposed amnesty on building violations, Labour’s policy on the illegal shantytown in Armier and now the relocation of the monti does not erode the Labour base, it just reinforces it.
This is what Labour promised in backroom deals. There lies its voter base, people who want preferential treatment and a renegotiation of every environmental and planning rule painstakingly introduced by the PN at its own expense.
It is for this reason that PN leader Simon Busuttil’s position, on moving the monti alongside the most iconic building to have been built in the last century, is the right one and should be repeated in the future as more and more cases arise of Labour backroom deals.
Busuttil said a future PN government would remove the monti hawkers from Ordnance Street. It is exactly the correct approach to take. Yes, it means that Busuttil is writing off the monti votes but that is the right thing to do.
The hawkers are as guilty as Labour in coming to this deal behind closed doors. It was a secret pact that humiliates and degrades our capital city. Labour can keep those hawkers because they belong to it, red-laced China-made knickers and all.
Significantly, it is in the cultural sector that the difference between the Nationalist and Labour parties is at its most acute.
Listening to Culture Minister Owen Bonnici speak on the future Malta Arts Council in Parliament last week was a painful and cringing experience.
He is promising a revolution through an arts council that would “breathe new life into culture” and that would be free from political interference.
Now this is gross, coming from Bonnici because, in the same breath, he lists government initiatives in the cultural sector, mentioning, above all, a fashion museum at the Smiling Prince in Strait Street.
That project, he said, was being set up with the help of (local, self-appointed fashion trend-setter) Mrs Michelle Muscat. Yes, culture under Labour is free of political interference.
As if to prove just how much Labour and culture are mutually exclusive, Bonnici followed up his speech in Parliament with the announcement of a carnival village in Marsa, complete with rehearsing space for rock bands, compliments of Labour billboard man William Mangion.
The multi-million euro project shall be called ‘Centre for Popular Culture’, a misnomer if ever there was one. Rock music is a niche and certainly not popular and, as for those terrible carnival floats that pollute our streets each year, they constitute anything but culture and are certainly no art pieces to keep in a museum.
If carnival is Labour’s definition of culture, no wonder they cannot understand why setting up a bazaar next to Renzo Piano’s building is so offensive.
Under Labour, the whole country has become one free-for-all bazaar where anything goes if it keeps the votes coming in, and to hell with the common good.
In retrospect, a monti at City Gate may actually befit the country after all. It hardly deserves any better.