He is Salvu Mallia, expert at drawing attention, consummate at being the anti-politician politician.Credit where it’s due. A dog-walking, homespun, fortune-cookie philosopher has managed to suck all the air out of the political room, attracting attention even in Brussels. The problem, from Mallia’s own point of view, is that he is also undermining the very cause that today defines him: the electoral defeat of this government.
He is a Nationalist Party candidate but keeps drawing attention away from the PN’s agenda and towards his own. How Mallia is to be ‘handled’ (if at all) has become a defining question for the leadership, a question raised by the Labour spin-machine but now with a life of its own.
You’d imagine Simon Busuttil would rather be spending his time defining himself against Joseph Muscat than in relation to one of his own candidates. But more of that in a moment.
The European Socialists, blindly following the lead given them by Muscat’s spinners, have condemned Mallia for his Hitler comparison in the interview he gave The Sunday Times of Malta. They couldn’t decide whether Mallia had actually praised Hitler or if, instead, he had done the opposite and attacked Muscat for being like Hitler. So they condemned him for doing both.
In fact, Mallia did neither. It’s almost never a good idea to bring Hitler into a political discussion and what Mallia actually said is laughable. But Hitler was wheeled in simply to dress up two political truisms into attention-grabbing headlines. First, that politics is no stranger to wolves in sheep’s clothing. Second, that the conditions of liberty can deteriorate almost imperceptibly, at first, but later with fatal momentum.
Mallia could have made the same point by referring to Little Red Riding Hood (the 17th-century Perrault version, of course, where the little girl is eaten by the big bad wolf) and snowball effects. I doubt we’d have heard a yelp from the Wolf Protection Agency or a hurt rejoinder from Snowflake Europe. Very few people would have even paid attention.
But of course he is Salvu Mallia, expert at drawing attention, consummate at being the anti-politician politician. And, now, in danger of becoming a fount of no-nonsense nonsense.
What Mallia says about flag and conscience makes sense as long as he remains someone defined by a single big issue and what he’s against. If all he wants is the defeat of Muscat at the polls, then what he says about the overriding national interest (the flag) and the overriding moral imperative (his conscience) clarifies his position.
It both explains and justifies why he thinks minor parties, despite their best intentions and harsh criticism of Muscat, actually risk helping his sordid government retain power.
The flag gives his argument focus by boiling things down to their essentials. The invocation of conscience – the do or die moment – explains why he is ready to overlook whatever he considers to be the shortcomings of the Nationalists.
You cannot be an anti-politician politician and, at the same time, represent a political party that aspires to govern the system
If he had stopped there – at being an anti-Muscat campaigner, urging people to use their vote rationally with one aim in mind – there would be no contradiction in his words and actions. Things change once he is a candidate for a party aspiring to do things, not just stop them. You cannot be an anti-politician politician and, at the same time, represent a political party that aspires to govern the system. Even simple words like flag and conscience change register.
A political candidate must be for, not just against, some things. Invoking the flag – the overriding national interest – is just not good enough. In choosing what to do, the national interest can be interpreted in more than one way. It’s the different interpretations that distinguish one political party from another.
Every prime minister and every political party since Independence has invoked the overriding national interest but they were arguing for very different things. It doesn’t tell us anything about Mallia, the would-be legislator, to be told he will take his cue from the flag.
On the contrary it keeps his hands remarkably free, while asking his voters for a blank cheque. He uses the language of the conviction politician but avoids telling us anything meaningful about his convictions.
His conscience will be no guide, either. There are some dramatic situations where a major political question transcends its surrounding circumstances. There conscience brooks no compromise. The decision cuts to the bone. All you need to know is the question.
In everyday politics, however, conscience works by seeing where compromise is possible in the light of the larger picture. Conscience is at work when a politician votes for a tax cut she considers harmful in order to achieve agreement on environmental regulations she considers more important.
Politicians give voters a good idea of the big picture they see by subscribing to a political programme. They give us a sense of their conscience (and conscientiousness) when they maintain a modicum of party discipline. Far from being at odds with one another, on most days party discipline and conscience go hand in hand.
Politicians don’t surrender their conscience when they sign up to a political programme. On the contrary, they’re making their conscience public, transparent and accountable. They’re saying they own the programme and will take responsibility for it.
It actually isn’t clear if Mallia is completely rejecting party discipline (as opposed to saying he will not sell his soul out of misplaced loyalty). But if he is, then he is at risk of turning into what he claims most to despise. The politician elected on one platform, who then chooses to do what he made no mention of doing. The politician who asks for a blank cheque and refuses that he can be accountable to anyone but himself.
There’s something else. By seeming to take no orders (or even cues) from his leader – and once he is a PN candidate, Simon Busuttil is Mallia’s leader – he actually undermines his defining cause. He undermines the PN’s chances of defeating Muscat at the polls.
The Opposition cannot win unless it’s compact behind its leader. Pluralism is one thing, anarchy another. The last time the PN had its candidates throw off discipline was during the 2009 European Parliament elections. One candidate shooting his mouth off gave licence to all of them. One declared he was against all hunting, another in favour of divorce and a third devoutly declared himself a pro-family conservative.
No one was impressed. Pluralism did not come across as a strength. It bred respect for the candidate, perhaps, but contempt for the party.
Mallia’s no-holds-barred, no-nonsense style threatens to make nonsense of his basic message. He tells all-comers that fragmenting the anti-Muscat vote helps his nemesis; but then he himself helps Muscat by weakening the image of his own leader. He wants all of Muscat’s opponents to be focused on the fundamental goal but then loses sight of it himself.
All this was predictable. You cannot follow Mallia without noticing how he fancies himself as unruly and anarchic. Time will tell – and it will tell soon, as people begin to make up their minds – whether Simon Busuttil was right to see more in him.
ranierfsadni@europe.com