Life has a funny way of coming full circle and proving us wrong. In 2012, when the two-man PN deputy leadership race was on, I clearly remember rooting for Simon Busuttil over Tonio Fenech. I believe I was even quoted as saying that I preferred Busuttil to Fenech “every day of the week and twice on Sunday”!
The reasons for my personal preference back then were quite simple. I felt that the PN needed a fresh face: someone squeaky clean, without baggage (or as close to that as possible). Busuttil’s well-scrubbed image fit the bill.
The fact that he was also a lawyer with experience in the European Parliament was a bonus. He had worked closely with Joseph Muscat and therefore knew what made him tick. His ‘emotional baggage’ was a plus-point in my eyes, especially after the bitter war over divorce and PN’s poor showing in the ensuing referendum. Here was a chance to appear more human and ‘relevant’, and to pave the way for a more liberal and less dyed-in-the-wool political approach.
But I was strangely sceptical. I wasn’t quite sure that Busuttil had it in him to ‘take it’ from ‘take-no-prisoner’ journalists and political opponents. Unlike Fenech, Busuttil was an unknown quantity, so there was no way of knowing whether his strengths on the European stage would translate locally. Maltese politics is a cut-throat and adversarial affair, not the ‘compromise and consensus’ of Brussels, an area in which Busuttil had more than proved himself. Fenech by comparison was more local, one of the Nationalists’ most effective communicators and the last of the ‘authentic’ old guard. And yet I was uncomfortable with his narrow, often unrealistic and inflexible mindset.
Busuttil was never meant to win the 2018 (2017) election. He was only meant to narrow the 36K gap (which, as we know, actually widened by 4,000 votes). Even if he didn’t quite have the political skin for the contest, I believe he could still have lived up to his potential had he played his own deck of cards, used his own voice, and fought his own battles.
That, you see, is what it all boils down to. You can only be convincing when you are completely true to yourself and when you adopt a style that suits your persona. Being loud, confrontational and aggressive isn’t for everyone. If you can pull it off and sound authoritative and assertive, all well and good. But if you wind up sounding shrill, militant, hysterical and unhinged, then you will never be popular or persuasive.
You can only be convincing when you are completely true to yourself and when you adopt a style that suits your persona
This was a problem Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici and, surprisingly, Alfred Sant both faced. The former is one of the most soft-spoken, reserved and courteous lawyers I have ever met. But his political persona was so completely out of character it made him one of the most unpopular and unconvincing politicians we’ve ever had. And Sant, for all his intellectual sophistication, was probably too ‘no-nonsense’ for Maltese politics and came across as aloof and uncharismatic. This explains why the Labour Party remained in Opposition for 25 years, apart from the PN breather between ’96 and ’98.
I spent most of the last campaign thinking back to those unelectable Labour years when the MLP couldn’t get its act together and was all over the shop. I remember the post-mortems (‘Labour needs to lose its dinosaurs’) that followed every election, not to mention the sinking feeling that the Labour Party would never win another election in my lifetime.
Much in the same way I still wake up in a cold sweat thinking that I haven’t studied for a school exam, I am jolted by just how diminished the Nationalist Party has become. In my ‘unconscious mind’, it is still the party with the best spin talking its way in and out of any discussion.
Reality has proved quite different. The fact that PN actually thought it was ‘this close’ to winning an election shows how out of touch with reality and the people it was. That 40K majority (far more than could ever attract accusations of being ‘bought’) says it all. Even the U-turn on cannabis and appearing more liberal didn’t work. There is evidence too that turnout in the PN strongholds was down, possibly for those very reasons.
Yes, the tables have turned. But they can turn again, just as swiftly, with the right leader at the helm. PN now needs a leader who’s not in denial and does not label the electorate ‘corrupt’ simply for returning a Labour government. The party has really got to acknowledge that the electorate chose Muscat’s government despite corruption, and not because of it. As it stands, that’s a view that says more about PN than it does about the electorate.
The latter saw, quite simply, that Muscat had delivered on prosperity. As did the business community, scared that Busuttil would start tearing up contracts. And yes, Muscat was without ‘personal baggage’ – perhaps traditional families are better than modern blended families when it comes to winning elections.
The right PN leader will know what to do. As Fenech said (and I’ve said), it all boils down to trust and the courage of your convictions. Those convictions don’t have to be blatantly populist; but in order to win the hearts and heads of people, they do need to be ‘owned’ by someone in charge.
As I have learned, it’s not about new faces. The Labour Party’s closet remained virtually unchanged, but that ceased to matter when they found the right leader. PN, one hopes, will in due course discover an effective Leader of the Opposition – a leader spared (because not requiring) those ‘kiss of death’ endorsements of prayer groups, bloggers, Facebook ‘friends’ and other interested chambers and bodies.
How necessary, and how refreshing, for a more dynamic and more healthy democracy.
michelaspiteri@gmail.com