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The PN has not won an election since Lawrence Gonzi became prime minister but the party’s Secretary General, Joe Saliba, sees this as a normal fact of life for a ruling party
Faced with the fifth consecutive electoral defeat, the ruling Nationalist Party adopts the business-as-usual pretence in what looks increasingly like a strategy of denial.
The losses are there for all to see as the parties conduct their own analyses of voter turnouts, shifts and new majorities.
 While Labour is gloating publicly at the results, PN Secretary General Joe Saliba insists they are only the predictable and inevitable consequences for the party in power whenever it faces the local electorate.
“We knew more or less what the results would be,” Saliba says matter of factly. “The picture we’re getting from this analysis is similar to the one we got over the last 14 years, since local elections started being held. Whether we like it or not, there’s a trend in which the party in government goes through these experiences, where results do not favour the ruling party.”
Saliba and his party resist talks of shifts in votes towards Labour, even though when one narrows down the analysis to particular localities there is evidence pointing in that direction.
The local elections of three years ago were somehow an abnormality given the European Parliament elections that led to soaring voter turnouts. But compared to six years ago, the PN lost 1,057 votes in Qormi alone, while Labour won 369.
“I didn’t say there haven’t been any shifts,” Saliba says. “What I’m saying is that with the figures we have, there is no way of establishing whether there were any shifts. If there were any shifts at all, they happened to both sides. There is always an amount of people who vote for party A (in general elections) but in local elections would vote for a preferred candidate who contests with party B. This happens in Hal Safi for sure, and in other localities. If you look at the figures of transferred votes and analyse them candidate by candidate, you find there is the same pattern both for the PN and MLP – both parties get the same share of transfers. In all, there weren’t more than 900 voters who gave their No. 1 to a candidate with a party and then shifted to the other party. So there is no method to establish that shifts have occurred.
“The 2001 election does not give you that indication either, because when you compare it to the two previous elections, the PN lost two majorities, some 10 councillors and around 1,000 votes, while Labour increased 5,000 votes. Yet again, there were no shifts. You have a third of the electorate that remains at home, for different reasons. Nobody should ignore that one-third of the electorate.”
Not ignoring that one-third of the electorate is one thing, but assuming they are Nationalists who would automatically vote in a general election is something else altogether – something the PN is arrogantly prone to do.
“Those who remain at home, normally, common sense tells you… if you look at Swieqi where we had the highest abstention figures, Swieqi is normally considered a Nationalist town. Gharghur follows suit, and it is also considered a Nationalist village. It doesn’t mean that all those who abstained are Nationalists. They’re Maltese and Gozitans who normally vote PN or MLP and my biggest surprise is… I understand that 35,000 voters decided to remain at home, and they were giving a message and that is also a form of action within the democratic process. Let’s not say they were predominantly Nationalist, that they were divided between PN and MLP – I understand that 17,000 would not vote PN in protest, and feel uncomfortable voting Labour. But what about the 17,000 Labourites who abstained? If they wanted to protest against the government they had much more reason to vote Labour. This shows you that the issues upon which one votes or abstains are much wider than one thinks. It would be a mistake, however, to turn the electorate’s vote in the local elections into a general election vote.”
Saliba also downplays the lowering turnout figures and does not admit any failure to mobilise them on his part. They are still very high when compared to election turnouts abroad, he says.
“If turnout abroad is lower and our country has reached a level of normality, there is no failure in that. Why should we be different from the rest of the world? Turnout is getting lower worldwide, and so it is in Malta. I hope it won’t get much lower because voting is part of the democratic process, but so is not voting. The fact that we’re the party in government, the dynamic with our own supporters is different from that of the opposition, for whom every election is much more important. I wish I could mobilise all the electorate, but the last thing I want to do is to hold a general election campaign every year. And I don’t wish to put the electorate in a situation of pressure as if it had to go to vote at all costs.”
But to the question of how many of the non-voters would the PN need to win the majority, the PN secretary general says he wants to convince them all.
“I want to win all of them,” Saliba says. “Apart from having to chase after the Nationalists who didn’t vote, there’s no doubt there is a lot of disgruntlement among the Labourites because there is a huge mass of them who didn’t vote. After 20 years in opposition, the MLP has not yet managed to mobilise all its supporters; which means that internally there are a lot of problems within the Labour party, and I want to chase those people too.”
It is also strange for the PN to claim that it did not hold any electoral campaign – in a bid to downplay the loss – when it sent leaflets to all households and held home visits, with the prime minister himself visiting families in Hal Safi and Munxar.
“I agree with you; we didn’t say we had no campaign, we said we had a different campaign, a quiet one,” Saliba says in a stint of revisionism. “Different in the sense that we didn’t attack people personally. We did that in the past and were criticised, and I think whoever criticised us was right. This time we felt we did not have to criticise people, neither on a personal level nor on their actions. It was definitely different from the Labour campaign. As regards belligerence, even there we were markedly different on our media, but we had a campaign. We sent leaflets and visited families, including the prime minister, and I’m convinced it’s good that we did. In Hal Safi we managed to keep the mayorship by two votes. So the fact that the prime minister went to Hal Safi yielded results. But do you see this as a national campaign? If you have families who wish to talk to the prime minister, of course he’ll go there. He found the time to go. But you can’t call it a national campaign; it was a different campaign, a campaign that produced results.”
Did it? If Saliba is happy with those results then surely the party is just geared up for failure.
“Yes, it produced results,” Saliba insists. “While Labour’s campaign at face value gave them new majorities, I think the electorate showed it did not appreciate their campaign. Even if you look at the two mayors who were attacked, especially (former Mosta mayor) Joe Demartino, he actually increased votes.”
That’s only one way of looking at it – the party still lost the majority.
“Of course, I’m not saying we didn’t lose it, but the people are showing they don’t appreciate that kind of campaign in which you attack individuals personally, especially people who are helping the community.”
Meanwhile the next campaign leading to the general election will need some creative ideas from the PN as the big issues in the post-EU membership period are nowhere to be seen. Meanwhile, the middle class constituency that voted for EU membership seems to growing more and more distant from the party.
“The challenge the PN has is to keep these voters and win over new ones, more so in circumstances where there doesn’t seem to be a big national issue,” Saliba admits, although he surprisingly declares that the middle class is no longer disgruntled.
The main difference between Labour and the PN is “a question of credibility and commitment,” he says.
“We commit ourselves. If we have a policy on Sant’ Antnin, we took our decision and declared it. The MLP is noncommittal about everything. They publish piles of documents but there is absolutely no substance. It’s a question of credibility and commitment.
“There will always be issues, but not the big, national ones as we had in the past, and that makes the campaign much more difficult. Here is where Alfred Sant has an advantage, because he said it more than once: to win the election he’s ready to make an alliance with angels and with the devil. But the people are not fools. They realise that a person who remains on the fence cannot be trusted. That’s why the PN is being clear on many issues, with all the ensuing wins and losses. For example, the hunters’ message in this election was there. We had a number of invalid votes with ‘hunting and trapping’ written on them, and they weren’t just a few. We also lost a number of voters who are against hunting. Alternattiva argues that they are shifting towards the Green Party, but that’s not true. I hope they won’t and that the electorate keeps viewing the PN as the party that really defends the environment. Look at what happened in Swieqi and Attard. There are people for whom the environment is very important, much more than just the hunting issue. Still, it’s not the case that AD increased votes; it actually lost 24 per cent of votes.
“So I think the electorate recognises the good things we did for the environment – the fact that we’re rehabilitating Maghtab, that last year we planted 10,000 trees and 5,000 the previous year, that we introduced unleaded petrol, that we’re using fuel without sulphur, that we’re restoring rubble walls. I’m not saying we’re doing enough, but there are other elements, too. I understand those who want to see more done on the environment, but the people also realise that we were the ones to have done the most for the environment. There’s no doubt that Labour never did anything for the environment. It was in government at a time when the environment was a disaster, and environmentalists were beaten up. I was one of them in an environmental group. And it has no policies for the environment.”
Saliba is also dismissive of the significance of the prime minister’s personal secretary not being elected in Attard.
“It means nothing,” he says about Bartolo’s failure to get a seat on the council for the third consecutive time. “It just means that the people decided they did not want to vote for the prime minister’s personal secretary. He was left hanging, and the Alternattiva candidate got elected instead of him. Are we implying that the people vote for a person according to his links to the prime minister? Are we now deciding the interpretation of the vote? No I don’t accept that. The people are intelligent and mature and I highly respect the electorate’s decision and I have no right to interpret their vote.”
About his own future, Saliba reiterates he will step down from the post of secretary general after the forthcoming elections and rules out contesting as candidate.
“I don’t mean it to bind anyone else, but if I had to contest as a candidate, whatever I do from now to the election would be interpreted as a way of pushing myself. It would be a mistake to push myself as a candidate when I’m in charge of the campaign as secretary general,” Saliba says, adding vaguely that this would still not mean his retreat from politics.
About the party changes he would like to see after the elections, Saliba says the PN would need a stock-take of its media so that it becomes commercially viable while “improving credibility”. The party would also need to rethink its sectional committees and local clubs.
“The party has a lot of properties in almost every locality in Malta and Gozo and the way these were used in the past is no longer valid for today, and will definitely be less valid for tomorrow,” he says.
And Lawrence Gonzi should remain in office even if the PN loses.
“The opposition leader had three consecutive losses and remained leader,” Saliba says defensively.
I tell him Gonzi has not won a single election since he took over the helm of the party.
“For God’s sake you’re talking about local elections. It would be wrong to present them as national elections. It would be a great disservice if the media had to shift local elections onto a national level. A veritable disservice to the country.” |
