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The promises game is a basic element in the goings-on of politics practised all over the world. Those who followed last weekend’s closely fought Italian election must have realised that the campaigns of both sides was simply a mish-mash of promises interspersed with all sorts of name-calling and mud-slinging. Such is the world of those who immerse themselves in politics, whether in the Mediterranean, North Europe, or in any other country in any continent. That this particular Italian election ended in a veritable ‘photo-finish’, the likes of which every democrat wishes to avoid, is irrelevant as far as this argument is concerned.
‘Promises, promises’ is, of course, also part of the game in Malta, where clientelism has produced another level of the game – the personal one – as opposed to the publicly declared ‘promises’ strewn at the electorate in general such as promises for the removal of VAT or some other tax. Promises at that level are one thing, quite different from promises at the lower personal level, the micro-level, so to speak.
The MLP propaganda machine has been recently moving towards a strategy aimed at discrediting the PN for failing to honour its electoral promises, a strategy honed so as to depict the last two years since EU membership as proving that the Maltese never arrived at ‘the promised land’ – as if the full benefits of EU membership were ever meant to be felt overnight.
Writing in The Times last Wednesday, MLP leader Alfred Sant claimed that in the run-up to the 2003 general elections, ‘a huge swell of favours and personal u-turns’ became the order of the day and he predicted that the same thing will happen before the next general election in two years time. He also added that this time around, however, the PN ‘lacks an overriding theme around which it can marshal support among those who stay unconvinced that it is managing the country well’ - as the situation was three years ago when the EU membership question was a central issue of the election.
Incredibly, Sant ascribes the 2003 PN victory to clientelism and then to the EU issue in practically the same breath! Of course Sant ignored the no-holds barred tidal wave of clientelism before the 1987 election when the MLP government engaged 8243 employees with the public sector!
Going on in this vein in this article, Sant then tried to grab the high moral ground for himself as far as deceitful promises and other dirty tricks in politics are concerned by playing the victim’s role and predicting that, come election time, there will be a lot of PN media spinners who ‘will be busy looking the other way when the clientelism and negative campaigning of the PN machine become too raw.’ Methinks, however, that he doth protest too much.
It is uncanny how in this sort of assessment, Alfred Sant ignores completely what happened in the 1998 general election when he was in power and found that he could not cope with Dom Mintoff’s antics in Parliament and had to call a premature election. It is worth recalling that during the 1998 election campaign, Dr Wenzu Mintoff - in his then capacity of Chairman of Alleanza Gustizzja Socjali – Alternattiva Demokratika – went on record to write that: ‘Dr Sant’s commitment not to hand out jobs and promotions for the boys lasted only until his government became a caretaker.”! So much for favours and personal u-turns!
Alfred Sant ignores also the way the MLP played the promises game at a personal level in 1996 when Labour candidates and party functionaries made it a point to visit disgruntled PN voters and promised them that once Labour is in power their personal aspirations will be achieved, somehow or other. Besides the promises to remove VAT and to drastically reduce the restrictions constraining bird shooters, this campaign of personal promises is what really clinched the election for Alfred Sant in 1996. It was his secret weapon that caught the PN unawares.
In spite of what Alfred Sant and the MLP are publicly stating at the moment, I have reason to believe that they are up to the same trick again – and this time they are probably finding a very handy tool in the list of voters who decided to abstain from voting in local elections. Many of these, of course, are disgruntled PN voters to whose ears the promise of a ‘solution’ to their problems would certainly be sweet music.
Incidentally these short-lived promises go a long way at explaining the astounding way how Alfred Sant’s majority of 7,633 votes in the 1996 election became a minority of 12,817 votes in twenty-two months – a swing of 1,000 votes a month!
In spite of what the supporters of the party that loses every election say, clientelism hardly helped the MLP to win the 1987 – although perhaps their behaviour somehow served as damage control, considering the small difference in votes between the PN and the MLP. Perhaps, this served to keep Labour under the illusion that they could win the 1992 election with disastrous results for Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici.
Sant also conveniently described the Labour’s recently published wishy-washy policy documents as ‘plans that set a new beginning for economic and social strategy.’ These are, of course, nothing but empty promises that could mean anything to everyone and nothing to nobody.
Another interesting angle on Labour’s ‘promises’ strategy is that it implicitly accepts the theory that the results of Local Council elections have no bearing on the way people will be voting in the general election, come 2008. Rather than building on the impression that Lawrence Gonzi’s three local election losses in a row mean that the writing is on the wall and a Labour victory is a foregone conclusion, the way the Labour Party propaganda machinery is building up its attack on clientelism and promises, as if these were some PN monopoly - when the MLP is historically guilty of this behaviour to quite a large extent – seems to indicate that the die may not be cast, after all.
micfal@maltanet.net
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