I was abroad when Simon Busuttil gave his bullish interview to The Sunday Times of Malta on September 27. “When I become prime minister…” may have been only a sub-editor’s take on the interview. But the headline accurately captured the message Busuttil was trying to convey.
I was left with mixed feelings. Was this somebody whistling in the dark, trying to keep his spirits up? Or was it a prime minister-in-waiting who sees his moment arriving – albeit not for another twenty-six months.
They say that a week is a long time in politics. But what about 112 weeks? That is a very long time.
Even allowing, therefore, for the hyperbole that drives most political leaders and the essential need to make their foot soldiers feel that victory is within their grasp, I came away after reading the interview unconvinced. The core vote in the Nationalist Party would have been heartened by it, of course. But thinking, floating voters? I’m not so sure.
As an independent political commentator, it is my job to assess what the leader of the Opposition says and does.
After 30 months studying his performance as PN leader – and as somebody who had admired his grasp of the European Union brief when he was articulating the case for joining the Union in the pivotal referendum in 2003 – I have a number of impressions of Busuttil.
I make no mention of the nine years he spent in Brussels as a European MP, as he does in his interview, since that taught him nothing of the cut and thrust of Maltese politics and the need to exercise robust political leadership in this bear pit.
What matters is how he has performed as leader of PN and of the Opposition. What has been his own personal impact on his party and country? In his interview, he reminded us that: “I started from minus 36,000. The ship wasn’t sinking, it was a wreck.”
Such self-flagellation is honest and also gives him the opportunity to imply progress under his watch. But the truth is the ship wasn’t sinking. Under our two-party electoral system, the Opposition – no matter how deeply holed beneath the waterline – will always stay afloat.
Was it a wreck, however? Financially, undoubtedly. Demoralised? Yes. But to say it was a wreck is to do a disservice to his predecessor, most of whose ministers still serve, in one capacity or another – for good or ill – under Busuttil.
Although he wishes to convey the impression that he no longer captains a wreck, the fact is that he is still surrounded to a large extent by the same tired, ineffectual and time-expired volcanoes
This is part of Busuttil’s problem. Although he wishes to convey the impression that he no longer captains a wreck, the fact is that he is still surrounded to a large extent by the same tired, ineffectual and time-expired volcanoes. When he finds himself obliged to select one of his MEPs as the shadow minister for education – a key post – with perhaps one of the worst environment ministers (remember “Vote George, Get Lorry?”) as his education spokesman because she can’t make her voice heard in the House while serving in Brussels, it exposes the dearth of talent on his front bench.
The most telling question in the interview, however, concerned Busuttil’s vision for the country. His reply? “We need to adopt a European mentality. It’s not enough to be part of the EU. We need to become European – adopting high environmental standards, having culture as part of our everyday life, living a healthy lifestyle, implementing a social market economy, having a social model where those in need are supported, ensuring high standards of public service.”
This was a depressingly limited and unimaginative vision.
“We need to become European” displays the kind of inferiority complex which I thought Malta had long overcome. We have always been European in our culture and in our rulers – except for a 300-year blip of Arab hegemony over 1,000 years ago.
Compare Busuttil’s vision with that which Eddie Fenech Adami – Malta’s greatest prime minister since Independence and probably in our history of self-government – brought in 1987. After 16 years out of office, his PN came to power with not only a clear vision of where they intended to take Malta but also a transformative 20-year plan of how to do it.
Joining the EU was the vision. Fenech Adami had also engaged some of the best young Nationalist minds in Malta while he was in opposition – the likes of Fr Peter Serracino Inglott, Michael Frendo, Louis Galea, Michael Falzon, Richard Cachia Caruana and others – to re-energise the party’s thinking, to make it credible again to the widest cross section of the electorate and to plot a visionary way ahead.
If Busuttil were prime minister in 2018, what would be his vision for the next two Parliaments until 2030? As the two demolition jobs on the idea by Claire Bonello and Godfrey Pirotta highlighted, I don’t think eradicating clientelism, or establishing the so-called ‘Citizens Rights Ministry’, quite qualifies as inspirational vision.
Unless Busuttil is able to show through his party’s new policies that a Nationalist government under his leadership would be markedly different from Joseph Muscat’s Labour Party, he will not be able to inspire the country at large. He will reach his core supporters, as he is doing now, but he will not be able to shift enough of the 36,000 to propel him into Castille.
Busuttil’s vision must invigorate people with hope of efficient governance and a better future. A structured series of comprehensive, wide-ranging policy reviews into every aspect of government, dealing with the economy, the environment, health, education and social issues are needed to show what Malta’s ‘Vision 2030’ is and how Busuttil is going to achieve it.
Winning office depends upon accomplishment and vision, not simply on the weakness of opponents. Busuttil currently relies on knee-jerk reactions to issues, helped enormously by an accident-prone government, whose administrative and governance skills have been found severely wanting.
Is he capable of doing this? On present showing, I remain doubtful. Busuttil is a decent and likeable man but he has picked an indifferent front bench and clearly does not have personal policy advisers of intellect, judgement and calibre. He lacks personality, boldness, ruthlessness and the leadership qualities to win over hearts and minds.
Leadership is precisely that – leading. Yet, over civil unions and hunting he not only went against his own party manifesto but also against his own principles (he now says he is “personally not in favour of bird killing”). It is an exaggeration to say removing the crime of vilification “is a threat to national security”. “I cannot be bought”, implying, without any evidence to support it, that his opponent has been.
To the objective observer he sounds petty, not potent or authoritative. Petulant rather than prime-ministerial.
“When I am Prime Minister” may have sounded like a good sound bite to those of his faithful supporters who long to see it happen but I very much doubt it impressed many others. It had the whiff of hubris about it. Busuttil appears to have forgotten one of the iron lessons of political history that you may mount right to the top and hear harps in the air but the higher you climb the greater the risk of a fall.