This election belongs to the fringe. Of course, the bulk of voters remain loyal to one of the two main parties, an allegiance by pedigree or ideology. But the erstwhile incremental growth of floating voters has been boosted this time round by wavering support at the ideological core – the two parties’ centrist, liberal pitch has alienated the staunch Catholics from the PN and the committed socialists from the PL – and by the nature of the battle being compared in historical magnitude to the epic 2003 election that decided Malta’s destiny in the EU.
And among the floating voters, which now include those flirting with the idea of putting their vote somewhere beyond their usual comfort zone, the shifts and segmentation have produced an electoral kaleidoscope. Never before has the floating vote been so fragmented.
Both parties sense that this is where the decisive battle lies. Within the floating voters, the indications are that the PN is attracting the largest proportion of the chattering classes (the intelligentsia) who are banking on the Busuttil-Farrugia duo to make progress on matters on which Muscat fell short of expectations that he set himself in 2013 – good governance, due process.
The PL has been putting a lot of energy into courting another substantial segment of floating voters: the gays (a term I prefer to the acronym LGBTIQ). Labour marched out a prominent gay to give a much-publicised speech at one of its mass meetings; it brought a transgender who suffered inordinately under the previous administration to exalt Muscat as “a father”; and the advance of gay rights has been flaunted in the PL’s electioneering. And the PN, vying for the same fringe, has now enshrined gay marriage in its manifesto – a leap for the PN from its hesitant stance a few years ago.
Staunch Catholics are aghast at both parties’ embrace of social liberalism, but the PN, by being the more cautiously liberal of the two, may garner the votes of the greatest proportion of them
But am I the only one troubled by the assumption that the PL deserves the gay vote solely for the advancements of the past legislature, or the intimation that gays vote almost singularly on the basis of gay rights?
It’s troubling because it reduces gays to a single-issue block of voters and it posits that gays’ interest in politics does not transcend narrow gay issues. That caricature does a disservice to the wider acceptance of gays in society. (I like to believe that gays are like the rest of us, some shallow, some deep, and that most cast their vote on a basket of issues.)
In the case of another single-interest block of voters, hunters and trappers, the vying for their vote has shifted the debate about the issues. Bird trapping is no longer anathema, despite the fact that permitting large-scale trapping in autumn is clearly in breach of the Birds Directive, and both leaders now offer the same noncommittal and vague pronouncement that they will respect the EU court ruling on the matter (it’s not as if they could do otherwise).
Muscat meanwhile has gone a step further in appealing to hunters by stating that penalties for illegal hunting and trapping ought to be lowered. This has dismayed environmentalists – Muscat’s calculation may be that committed environmentalists are unlikely to vote Labour anyway – and belied the government’s narrative on illegal hunting. I mean, if illegal hunting or poaching has become sparse, as this government has consistently maintained for the past years, then why lower the fines to appease the few law-breakers? Or is it an unwitting admittance that many more hunters would resort to illegal hunting if the penalties weren’t so stringent?
There are other segments of fringe voters whose votes are dithering. The PD might lure the votes of some of hardcore environmentalists who usually vote AD. Staunch Catholics are aghast at both parties’ embrace of social liberalism, but the PN, by being the more cautiously liberal of the two, may garner the votes of the greatest proportion of them.
By contrast, Muscat wanted to symbolise Labour’s initiative in social liberalism by pledging to debate legalising recreational cannabis. The PN reacted quickly, not to be outdone on the liberal vote, vowing much of the same (Muscat then upgraded his stance to supporting legalisation more decisively).
Labour’s edge in liberalism is set against the PN-PD alliance, given Marlene Farrugia’s avowed liberalism across a range of issues. The politics of coalition is also progressive in itself, and the attractiveness of PN-PD to the fringe has been driving the PL’s oblique attacks on the coalition.
The imagery that’s being put out by the PL pits Muscat’s supposedly strong leadership against Busuttil’s perceived weaknesses, and Farrugia fits in that imagery as the domineering partner of the duo (as well as someone who has Godfrey Farrugia by the nose). Wittingly or unwittingly, Farrugia is depicted as unfeminine and overbearing and fickle – and that shows that, for all the rhetoric about liberalism and feminism, our instincts remain conservative and misogynist, and the PL has no qualms in exploiting that prejudice where it suits it.