In the coming days the political parties will be launching a final onslaught in the European Parliament election campaign. Much effort will be made. In reality, it will be a waste of time and resources. The outline of the campaign result is a foregone conclusion. Of interest will be what happens next.
The election will be won by the Nationalist Party, breathing welcome wind into Simon Busuttil’s sails. The Labour Party and the Nationalist Party will each win three seats, which means that the Nationalists will capture the fourth seat from the Labour Party. That has always been on the cards.
The Nationalists will also narrow the voting gap between the two parties. That always happens in the EP elections. The government of the day, suffering from what I’d call the perils of incumbency, loses votes on a relatively low voters’ participation. The question will be, by how much?
I dare say that the gap will narrow very significantly, perhaps dramatically, from that registered in the March 2013 general election. It could halve be an even worse result for the Labour Party. That will come about because of two factors.
Firstly, a number of Labour voters from the party’s grassroots will consciously stay away from the polls; a few will turn up but cast a blank or spoilt ballot. Secondly, a number of those who in the 2013 election switched to Labour will vote Nationalist or not vote at all, thereby also reducing the preferences for the Labour Party.
Why should it be like that?
There are, first of all, a number of disgruntled hardline Labour supporters. It is part of the political game that supporters of the party which wins the right to govern always expect to have actual or perceived injustices redressed, to see that promises made to them in the electoral campaign are redeemed, and to feel specifically favoured rather than simply share in whatever general well-being ‘their’ government achieves.
The latter category will not see many deliberate abstentions. The other two categories are unknown quantities but could be quite substantial. The first category will feel that Labour has not rectified enough actual or perceived injustices. The second, mostly angling for a government job or decent public housing, will always be in a majority relative to those who can be accommodated by the government.
Labour, as the party in government, has guess estimates of the figures involved. They are probably substantial, explaining the pitch made by the party for disheartened grassroots voters to put aside their disappointment, go and cast their vote and hope for better days.
This category of voters will not be impressed by liberal legislation or turning Cyrus Engerer into a ‘soldier of steel’ rather than saying that, by withdrawing from the EP elections, he only did what was expected of him in the circumstances. Such voters want bread or its equivalent, not a Roman circus.
In the coming week, the Labour pitch at them will rise to feverish proportions. At this stage, it can only have a marginal effect.
The switchers to Labour, who will stay away from the ballot or go and cast their votes for the Nationalists, cannot be enticed back. They will include those who switched not because they were not accommodated by the Nationalist government, but because they grew sick and tired of the sorry state Malta had been turned into and by the arrogance of the governing class.
Disheartened grassroots voters will not be impressed by liberal legislation
This group – switchers who are not after personal favours but who hoped for a better government – will feel that they jumped from the frying pan into the fire. The Labour government came up with its unexpected share of arrogance. That started with the President’s speech on the opening of the first session of this legislature. The speech, as always written by the government of the day for the President to read out, was a very bad political mistake.
It offended those who believe that procedure and precedent should be followed. Nationalist speeches had included offensive remarks too, but not to the extent of the Labour 2013 speech.
That set the tone for switchers not that much interested in the stream of liberal legislation and policies that followed. Changing the heads of the Civil Service, the Police and the Armed Forces, logical as it was with a change of government, was also offensive to many. They will not be persuaded by the sound argument that a new government puts in place a new revised order. The way it was done was too crass.
To make matters worse, the Labour government did not bother to explain properly what it was doing and why. It was in those early days that the seed of arrogance was sown. Since then, there were various mistakes, some attributable to inexperience, others to bad advice, as with the Individual Investment Programme. Mistakes, bad advice and necessary but unpopular measures merged into the messy substance of actual or perceived arrogance.
The outcome of the voting in a week’s time will include the effect of the perils of incumbency and the messages that dispirited Labour voters will want to send to the government. It will include a swathe of switchers who have irretrievably lost to Labour.
The burning starting question will remain – how many in each case?
Joseph Muscat’s political team, which worked so effectively in the 2013 electoral campaign, includes the resources that can broadly answer those questions, making a proper estimate with the election result figures in hand. He will take into account those answers and think carefully on what to do about them. He faces a dilemma. If he increases his team’s efforts to satisfy Labour voters, he will probably disenchant more switchers.
What, then, to do? That is when the mettle of a politician will be tested. There are four years to go to the general election. Enough time to reshape the government from what has been a very odd first year, an uneasy blend of successes which are not as yet appreciated enough and failures which the Nationalists have been gifted the opportunity to exploit more than they deserve.
That time will also be used by the Nationalist Party to restructure and for Busuttil to decide how far he is prepared to come out to be counted as a politician with the aggression and honesty required of him.
Interesting times ahead.