It’s been done before and will happen again. Marlene Farrugia has left the Labour Party (and the Nationalist Party before that) and is now setting up her own political party. It will unoriginally be called Democratic Party and will presumably be represented in Parliament by Dr Farrugia. We have been there already.
When Toni Abela and Wenzu Mintoff left the Labour Party in 1989 to set up Alternattiva Demokratika, they did so only temporarily and returned as soon as they saw that their party had ‘reformed’. AD is still around, a quarter of a century later, never having ever come close to electing anyone to Parliament. A bad omen for Dr Farrugia.
She describes herself as a born Labourite who will die a Labourite, which leaves a lot of flexibility around the middle. Like Dr Abela and Mr Justice Mintoff before her, she derides the Labour Party she helped elect into office, saying it is not sticking to its electoral promises. She throws into the mix a so-called ‘movement’ to which she belonged, which, we now realise, was really just a vague concept concocted by Labour to attract switcher voters who never felt comfortable being associated with Labour.
The new Democratic Party appears to be targeting exactly those people, the so-called disillusioned, first-time Labour voters who may be finding it hard to turn to, or return to, the Nationalist Party. Surveys show that ‘switcher’ support of Labour is crumbling. Dr Farrugia thinks she can garner those votes but, given the electoral system, the odds are their votes would go to waste.
The new party’s colour will be orange, like an opaque red, because Dr Farrugia says it will be centre-left. That’s the only element known so far. It will, no doubt, have a green agenda, given Dr Farrugia’s vociferous positions, but, really, that’s AD’s agenda. Efforts to merge the two parties appear to have failed, if they ever got off the ground at all.
Dr Farrugia has made many contrasting statements, such as that politics was dead and it was time for civic society to take over. That would naturally exclude Dr Farrugia from the very party she now leads. Nevertheless, it does not mean a successful third party would not be useful.
The main reason why the two main political parties disappoint is that there are just two of them.
To achieve an electoral success that enables it to govern, a party must widen its appeal in all possible ways, effectively diluting ideology to the point that both the Nationalist and Labour parties are now centre political forces. A third party with a clear ideology based on sound values would bring a breath of fresh air and offer less compromise on fundamental local issues.
Dr Farrugia is emphasising good governance, which is what the PN is also doing. Hopefully, her party will come up with something more and different.
Ideologically the two main parties may appear similar but there are huge differences on the issues of good governance, accountability, transparency and meritocracy. Dr Farrugia has strong positions on those issues too. But can she win the fight from without?
PN leader Simon Busuttil said his party was the only alternative to Prime Minister Joseph Muscat’s “dirty politics”. It was a realistic, albeit not an idealistic, response to Dr Farrugia’s new party.
If Dr Farrugia wants to die a Labourite she must change Labour. She may have stood a better chance of succeeding from within, than by changing T-shirts.