He’s no Screaming Lord Sutch but, as the Sobbing Earl Grey, he comes close. So which political party in its right mind would, in 2017, field Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando as one of its candidates?
He is widely disliked by the core voters of both major political parties. Nationalist voters will never forgive what they consider his multiple betrayals. Labour has never officially retracted its 2008 allegation that he was party to corruption in a deal involving his land in Mistra. Alfred Sant pretty much summed up many Labourites’ feelings when he said he’d sooner vote for the fringe Tal-Ajkla party.
Even Joseph Muscat, who himself made that corruption charge on TV in 2008, has never actually retracted a word. When asked, in 2013, why as Prime Minister he had retained Pullicino Orlando as chair of the Malta Council of Science and Technology, he simply said that they had “worked well together”.
That kind of phrase acquires a different resonance when you’re accused of cronyism. It’s not what you want to remind people when the top election issue is corruption. (And we’re not even getting into the questions surrounding Pullicino Orlando’s contract and conduct.)
So why Pullicino Orlando? Is Labour going mad? No, it has coldly recognised that this last week is not a battle for hearts or minds.
It’s a battle for gut feelings.
Voting with your gut is neither voting with your mind nor with your heart.
Voting with your mind is about analysing the central issue and voting in accord with your conclusion. It’s rational voting based on how things are.
Voting with your heart is about voting for an ideal. How you’d like the world to be. It’s voting as an act of emotional communication. Don’t mistake it for stupid. Emotional intelligence is real: when it picks up the likeability of a candidate and the warmth of a goal, it’s often picking up important social signals.
Voting with your gut is different. Gut feelings are emotional instincts disguised as rational thought. Thanks to gut feelings, we can bypass analysis and jump to conclusions. The speed is useful and we usually land on our feet. But, of course, sometimes we crash.
Usually, our mind, heart and gut feelings are aligned. But sometimes they’re out of joint. Particularly when our mind is telling us something different from our heart, the result can be indecision.
The next 10 days will be a long street by street battle for the gut feelings of the undecided
I think the high rate of indecision shown by the polls is due to voters having their hearts and minds at odds with each other.
In some cases, their mind is telling them to vote against the party they love. For others, the current situation is unprecedented, difficult to reason out, and emotionally entangled.
Historically, our national experience is that corruption and tangible economic trouble go together. Fixing law and order goes well with fixing the economy, like mint and chocolate. This time, however, it’s different.
The corruption has been discovered before the economic implosion. Many voters are angry about corruption but feel good about the economy. They’re not sure if the sleaze is the lubricant of prosperity or the oil slick that will see us skid over the abyss.
At this point, I believe the undecideds will not make up their mind on the basis of further rational argument. All the arguments have long been laid out, as has sufficient evidence.
Nor will further appeals to the heart make much difference. All those appeals have been made. The undecideds remain torn.
Not being able to decide on the basis of their mind or heart, in the end they will decide suddenly on the basis of their gut. The next 10 days will be a long street by street battle for the gut feelings of the undecided.
That’s where Pullicino Orlando comes in. For the votes that matter, he’s not important enough to sway the argument or the heart. But he can touch gut feelings.
Those voters still undecided because of past Nationalist sins – their mind says vote Nationalist but their heart still dislikes them – won’t vote for Pullicino Orlando. But he’ll remind them of the PN’s stance on divorce and of the divisions in the last PN government.
Never mind that divorce is under the bridge and that he was a prime cause of that division. That’s not how gut feelings work. They are emotions disguised as reasons. Pullicino Orlando will bring them all flooding back. That’s his role, whether he’s been told or not.
He is part of a systemic, cunning Labour final-sprint campaign for gut feelings. It’s why Labour is repeating, among others, two key messages on the flimsiest of pretexts.
First, Simon Busuttil is not his own man because he will have to pay attention to Marlene Farrugia.
Now, in 2013, Labour passed off as a strength that Muscat would be able to listen to the likes of Louis Grech and Edward Scicluna. But Farrugia is a woman, and the most feminist government in history has no difficulty suggesting that a man who pays attention to a woman isn’t quite his own man. They know it will make him less likable with a certain kind of undecided voter.
Second, they’re identifying open criticism of Muscat at the European level with attacks on Malta. Never mind that it is Muscat who has left the city gates wide open for our economic rivals to strike.
It’s Muscat who almost certainly knew first about the upcoming Malta Files. He preferred to risk having the story break during an election campaign – with the country in the weakest possible position to rebut the allegations with all hands on deck.
Muscat’s handling of Panamagate opened Malta to a credible attack. His play to return power left Malta in the weakest position to rebuff the attack. Yet he wraps himself up in the flag.
Rationally, it shouldn’t work. But it toys effectively with gut feelings. It’s only when they’re put into words that the outrageous, absurd nature of the claims is exposed to the light of reason.
Yes, it takes a patient good listener, non-judgemental enough to let a friend put a gut feeling into words. Then the real conversation can begin.
As the entrepreneur Claudine Cassar said earlier this week, we have a narrow time window – two to three months – in which to save Malta’s reputation. As for wisely addressing our friends’ gut feelings: we have a week.
ranierfsadni@europe.com