Joseph Muscat’s Labour Party seems to have succumbed to the understandable but politically risky temptation of fostering nostalgia for the Mintoffian years in power in the delusion that it would boost its chances of winning the coming general election.
The Nationalist Party is the topmost political beneficiary of Mintoffianism- Austin Bencini
This is understandable at the emotional level since the last time Labour completed in full a five-year term in office was during the Mintoffian majority of 1981-1987.
The temptation may grow following the current controversy raging on whether Dom Mintoff was the saviour or the scourge of Malta in the wake of the film Dear Dom, especially since, at the coming election, a new generation of voters born immediately after the defeat of Mintoffianism at the 1987 election would not have had a direct and first-hand taste of what Mintoffianism in power meant in harsh reality.
This “post-Mintoffian” generation has only tasted in effect the Nationalists in power.
Mintoffianism, of course, was the product of the personality cult which the charismatic leader had imposed on his party such that his personality cult became much larger than the entire party itself. The Labour Party thereby lost its soul by so doing in that the ideologies of Socialism and of Social Democracy become empty and hollow words, totally absorbed in the will of Mr Mintoff; those who voted Labour became Mintoffian and not socialist.
However, if the Labour Party were to set aside emotional nostalgia and instead put on its hard rational political thinking-cap, it must come to the conclusion that, in fact, the Labour movement was arguably Mr Mintoff’s greatest victim!
Firstly, it paid the bitter consequences of the “civil war” which Mr Mintoff brought about by his splitting the Labour movement in his coup to oust and replace the first Labour Premier, Paul Boffa. Under Boffa, Labour had won two landslide majorities, the scale of which was never to be repeated in the entire post-war electoral record to date and it looked set to remain in power for many years following the practical electoral wipe-out of the opposition.
At the elections of 1945 and 1947, Labour stood unrivalled in the political scenario since the Nationalist Party was still suffering from the electorate’s anti-Italian feelings after World War II. Then, Mr Mintoff struck and the ensuing split meant that the PN was unexpectedly and against all of the odds to claim the premiership for five years, first under Nerik Mizzi and then George Borg Olivier.
Mintoffianism was therefore born in the four elections between 1950 and 1955 through which Mr Mintoff asserted his undisputed dominance over the Labour movement to the eternal gratitude of the Nationalist Party.
Following Mr Mintoff’s victory at the 1955 election, Labour seemed back in the driving seat. However, the Mintoffian cocktail of “democracy-with-a-punch-or-two” meant that only three years after Mr Mintoff’s 1958 riots saw not only the Maltese losing the 1947 self-governing Constitution but, more catastrophically for Labour, its not winning another election from 1955 till 1971 and, once more, all this to the benefit of the Nationalist Party, which won the next two elections and governed from 1962 till 1971.
If all this were not enough, Mr Mintoff’s retirement from the Premiership did not mean he became a loyal supporter of the party. In 1998, he single-handedly voted out of office the openly post-Mintoffian Labour government of Alfred Sant after barely two years in office and after nine years in opposition.
So, to the nostalgics within the Labour Party, let it be known that Mintoffianism has led to defeat in the 1950, 1951, 1953, 1962, 1966, 1987, 1992 and 1998 elections and victory only in the 1955, 1971 and 1976 elections!
Incidentally, it is sincerely hoped that not even the most rabid of Mintoffians will want to add that “mother of perverse results” of the 1981 election among Mr Mintoff’s victories, when Mr Mintoff and that prime disciple of Mintoffianism, Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici, remained in power against the will of the majority of the electorate for five whole years!
All this without mentioning that the Labour Party has yet to recover from the body-blow delivered by Mr Mintoff to the Sant government with the result that Labour have lost the 2003 and 2008 elections.
So would Dr Muscat’s efforts in appealing to the nostalgia of the Mintoff years in power by publicly endorsing Dom’s daughter as a candidate be good news for the Labour Party or for that topmost political beneficiary of Mintoffianism, namely the Nationalist Party?