Locally anaesthetised

It’s been a dismal electoral pattern for the Nationalist Party these last three years, so what does secretary-general JOE SALIBA have to say for himself and the party?

Saturday’s elections were an eerily calm affair. With a dull and boring campaign, Labour’s victory had been a relatively forgone conclusion, although few expected such a landslide, with key PN councils shifting to red. PN apologists blamed the outcome on the low turnout, just a mere five percentile points less from 2000, or the general apathy amongst the electorate. Some suggested it was yet another way of keeping in power the person whom the Nationalists believe will grant them victory at the national elections: Alfred Sant. Few remain convinced of this “intelligent” strategy. This time, defeat spells big trouble for the Nationalist government in its mid-year litmus test. Even former MP Josie Muscat managed to secure a seat at the expense of his former party in Maraskala – it was bad news for the PN.
Lawrence Gonzi appeared to make nothing of it. On Sunday’s press conference, the Prime Minister, armed with his trademark chortles and performative smiles, opened up a suitcase full of soundbites. Without even a coy attempt at making sense, Gonzi sounded foolhardy in his claim that the electoral result had sent a “clear” message to the PN: “In my opinion, it is a message from our people that it recognises the country is moving forward, but it is also inviting the government and the party to distribute amongst everyone the wealth being generated through its economic growth.”
Had the electorate really given the Nationalists a thumbs-up? Looks like somebody is confusing the fingers here. Like Gonzi, secretary-general Joe Saliba has presided over three failed electoral bouts since the PN was kept in power on a propitious EU ticket. It’s been a proper electoral downhill, with great electoral disillusion over hiked energy prices weighing heavily upon the perception of the Nationalist government. Not even deputy PM Tonio Borg’s attempt at a moral coup to introduce abortion in the Constitution failed to capture the people’s imagination. Everything has been a right mess.
I meet Saliba at the new PN headquarters in Pietà, where the local council here had been PN-dominated since 1994. Its long-standing mayor Malcolm Mifsud suffered the brunt of the great red vote, losing the mayorship and the council to Labour. Like Msida and San Gwann, the unthinkable had happened for the PN even in the Nationalist locality underneath which the dreaded St Luke’s Hospital incinerator has bellowed mercilessly.
“It’s difficult to ascertain a shift,” Saliba says about his party’s result. “In this case there was no shift because the PN suffered 15,000 votes less and the MLP 4,000. Of course, nobody expected such a low turnout, but we did expect a normal 70 per cent turnout. I don’t think there is a method that can identify a shift. What can be said is that localities which are usually PN-dominated had low turnouts, from one election to another, of 28 per cent. In terms of votes, every party decreased its share. If there had been a real shift, Labour would have increased in votes.
“The fact that many people stayed at home, is no doubt this is a message: whether it is a form of protest or apathy, to me it’s a mixture of reasons. You always have 30 per cent of the electorate in these elections who doesn’t vote, ever. And they probably aren’t the same voters. Of course there was an element of protest, both at individual and local level, such as the Qui-Si-Sana, the waste recycling plant and the incinerator issues, and also at national level. We would be fools not to acknowledge the effect of the energy surcharge and how this influenced people’s choices. But a government cannot suspend its decisions because of a local election.”
Defending the government’s courage in not postponing unpopular decisions even before election day, the Nationalists are confident of their progress, irrespective of the Labour majority: “I don’t agree it’s a message of no confidence in the government. I can’t see from where this emerges,” Saliba says. I tell him Gonzi believes it’s not the end of the world. Isn’t it a rather simplistic way of extrapolating the message from this election? Saliba says that without a shift, there has been no vote against the government. “What it means is that the people are in favour of government’s national policy,” he states.
I ask him how that could possibly be a positive verdict for the Nationalist government, with three localities turning red, Labour making good inroads in Birkirkara, Sliema and Lija, and losing 8.6 per cent of the vote in Sliema since the last elections. How could Gonzi seriously consider this election was a pat on the back for the Nationalists?
“Nobody can deny the economy is moving on. International organisations are certifying this progress. Our finances are stable. What Gonzi said was that on a national level the country is strong and moving forward. Columnists and editorials have expressed this message, saying government has to continue in the direction it has taken, and not to change this direction because of the election result. Nobody can deny the energy surcharge is a burden on Maltese families.
“But there is also another message, and nobody can deny the message sent by Sliema’s residents with respect to the Qui-Si-Sana issue. And this means that on a local level there may have been less satisfaction, but on a national level people recognise that Gonzi’s government has made substantial changes and is moving in the right direction.”
Evidently, the people at the PN headquarters are chugging along merrily and unfazed by Labour’s landslide, confident that a low turnout has effectively minimised any critical shift. Gonzi himself appeared all the more churlish about perceptions that his government was standing on a pedestal, telling journalists that those who thought as much were those who criticised the Qui-Si-Sana project, a contentious car park and commercial mall fiercely opposed by some 600 residents in the quaint Sliema neighbourhood.
“The Prime Minister wants to look at the national interest, and this has to be weighed against the local interest. In this case the common good has to win. Our interest is not just the PN voters at Qui-Si-Sana, but the whole population. There should be no discrimination with an area based on their political inclination.”
Saliba claims the residents in Sliema are in favour of the project, and that it is only Qui-Si-Sana’s residents who are against. “Our country’s problem is its size, and projects have to be done, and somehow these will create problems one way or another. Qui-Si-Sana did not really deliver any enormous effect on the election – Alternattiva Demokratika focused its campaign in Sliema on the issue and did not improve their performance, they just got 31 votes more than the last elections,” Saliba says about the Green Party, whose marginal increase was a three per cent jump irrespective of the low turnout in the locality. “I go beyond Qui-Si-Sana – I look at Sliema through the bigger picture, at its problems of over-development and parking.”
The PN’s own bigger picture has been an electoral downhill since 2003, its vote share decreasing from 48.9 per cent to 42.9 per cent his year. Is the party suffering from a disenfranchisement problem? Has it lost some sheep along the way? “Firstly, we never call people sheep,” Saliba says with some feigned magnanimity. “Tonio Borg had once said the people had voted with their feet and that was quickly misinterpreted. People vote intelligently, according to what’s at stake during any particular election. I am convinced the people know that Dr Gonzi made important, responsible and much-needed changes. People recognise this, and they will be able to recognise whether this government has worked hard at the next election.
“You know so many say that as long as Alfred Sant remains in power the PN will win the election,” Saliba says.
I ask him whether he is still convinced of that. “I don’t even use that as an argument. We win elections because of our programme and the plan we enacted, and for putting in the economic structures which create wealth. The people decide on whether this government has brought forward the country and the individual, and for the best party, with the best policies and with the ability to take this country forward, and I am sure they will choose the Nationalist Party again here.”
That may as well be what the Nationalists hope will be the final call to all those pale blue voters who refused to take part in these council elections. Somehow they will buck up, hold their noses, and register a vote to keep out a Labour party which stands across a constructed political and cultural divide. I ask him whether the Nationalists are having problems in keeping their voters together. He replies by lauding democratic maturity: “Floaters are increasing. We are a popular party which attracts more floating voters than Labour. I don’t think it’s the Nationalists who are no longer within the core. It’s just that the Maltese are becoming Maltese first, before being Nationalist or Labourite. That’s how things should be.”
With such an electoral pattern spelling defeat after defeat, Joe Saliba quickly acknowledges that as secretary-general, he is the one who takes responsibility for the 2006 debacle. Surely, can he deny that he has failed once more at securing a positive verdict in the council elections?
“I cannot understand the question,” Saliba says. “Because Alfred Sant has lost two general elections and a referendum and is still leader of the Labour Party. You have to include the PN’s great victories: it’s either the entire test or nothing, and I was leading those campaigns myself. When you compare the war and the battles, we always won the war,” the battle hardened secretary general says.
So how will be taking the responsibility of defeat – will he commission yet again a report on the electoral loss, deftly authored by trusty Godfrey Grima? “There’s no need for that,” he replies deadpan.
It’s Thursday as we speak, and on the night Saliba would have met up with the party executive, the PN organ which appointed him as secretary-general. Does he feel he should put himself through a vote of confidence? “There’s no need for that, either.”
So how does he go about “taking responsibility”? What does it mean?
“How is responsibility taken? Responsibility is taken by saying that ‘I was responsible for this campaign and I was responsible for this result’.”
Stumped at his reply, I ask him what’s on the executive’s agenda tonight. “The local council election analysis. It will be the people on the executive who will be doing most of the talking. I will simply prepare an introductory powerpoint presentation… It’s the executive which decides on the performance of the secretary-general, and for the past seven years the executive has taken its decisions wisely.”
So what has changed since 2004, when the precious EU ticket consolidated the Nationalist government’s tenure for another five years? Why does this great faith voters allegedly have in the PN government, even after EU accession, never translate into local election success? Saliba says nothing has changed. “Nothing happened. The country enjoys more normality than ever before.”
I tell him this normality is rather costly for the Nationalist Party with a 53% vote for Labour in a PN-favoured round of local elections. “I cannot see it from your same perspective. Let’s allow the electorate to take its own decisions in these local elections. Of course I’d like to win. But take the UK: the Labour Party doesn’t win the local elections. However, Tony Blair has won the general elections three times in a row. And the same has happened in Germany and Italy. So why don’t we consider what is normal in other countries, as normal for us as well?
“It’s been the same for the past Nationalist legislature, with losses just prior to the general elections. In the referendum, with a high turnout, the yes vote with 54% was not matched by the vote at the local council elections, which was 49% for the PN. And a month later the Nationalists won the general elections. People vote according to what’s at stake: we should not pressure the electorate any more, let’s allow them to vote freely.”
With little at stake in this mid-term round of elections, the PN’s campaign turned out to be lacklustre. In places such as Gharb, with a guaranteed four quotas, it only fielded three candidates. Saliba says the party just didn’t find an extra candidate to secure an easy PN seat. “We didn’t have a campaign,” the secretary-general boldly states. “The independent press often laments the way these elections turn into general outings and that this isn’t normal. I think the media was right. And since we are in government we decided to keep this campaign based on house visits. We chose not to make any phone call campaigns either this year. We chose not to make it a general election.”
Indeed the PN was nowhere to be seen. Instead we had a good dose of government campaigns: a leaflet funded by taxpayers’ money on the Qui-Si-Sana project sent to Sliema residents days before the elections; the tax arrangement with the GRTU on host families, the majority of which happen to be in Sliema and San Gwann; a leisure park earmarked for Marsaskala right next to the maligned recycling plant announced days before election day; public consultations in Sliema with Transport Minister Jesmond Mugliett; and roads being layered in Rabat and Marsaskala. The PN did have a campaign, only it wasn’t the party but the government doing the campaigning.
“This is Sant’s discourse… so now we should expect the government to shut its mouth between January and March, and do nothing at all? You didn’t mention the fact that the electricity bills were issued fifteen days before the elections and the government did not stall this process just because it was facing a local election. We didn’t have an aggressive campaign, no discussions or mass meetings, because we don’t want to have three months of government inaction and mass electioneering every time there’s a local election. Let’s start living normally,” Saliba says, almost suggesting this hiatus in support for Nationalist councillors is merely a democratic jig until voters get all serious for the 2008 appointment. Wasn’t it also a message that the people are not relating to the party-government slogan that the Maltese are heading towards a better life? Saliba says the economic growth of 2.5 per cent bodes well for the future: “we are the fifth European country with the highest foreign investment in percentage terms … Of course to live better, the economy has to perform better. The economy has never been stronger in the last ten years. We would never be able to provide all these new residential roads if the economy hadn’t been performing well. And now the government is planning a tax reform, because the economic is performing well. Maybe this economic growth is not flowing as cash in hand, but it is certainly flowing in other terms.”
Good news then. These local council elections may as well be water over a duck’s back as the economy chugs on. “No we are taking these election results seriously. But within context, and the circumstances of what was going on nationally, internationally. We have managed to get the electorate to express itself every year, but we shouldn’t pressure it in getting it out to vote in order to get a different sort of message. Let’s not say this is the people’s general verdict. They want to vote for candidates beyond the party threshold. We have to distinguish between local and general elections: we have been elected on a national ticket and we want the electorate to vote freely. This is crucial.”