Malta’s liberals: between a rock and a hard place?
Explaining this island’s recent political scenario to foreigners has always been a tricky affair. “How can your socialists be so rabidly anti-EU and your conservatives so vociferously pro-EU?” friends would ask incredulously prior to our fraught referendum. Our political scene was, quite simply, all topsy-turvy. Another way of seeing it is that we are living – not solely geographically – isolated from the continent on an island which gives its own original meaning to concepts and words.
We should, I think, keep this original setup in mind when we engage in our post-EU battle. I’m referring to the war (minor skirmishes might be a better term) between Malta’s conservatives and liberals which promises to keep us entertained for the next decade or so. If newspaper articles and online comment boards are anything to go by, these topics consistently attract the most debate these days. If it’s not crucifixes it’s divorce, if it’s not divorce it’s censorship…
Maltese liberals broadly fall into three, possibly four, camps. The third and the fourth being, in my eyes, the most interesting.
PN liberals Anywhere else on the continent, it would be hard to convince anyone at all that there can be much comfort for liberals in a party whose deputy leader categorically states that a party was not, is not and will never be a liberal party and which proves that deputy leader absolutely spot on by refusing, over a period of a quarter of a century, to seriously engage in a debate on divorce legislation. Yet some of Malta’s most vociferous liberal voices on matters such as divorce, Church-State relations, censorship and the like are also the most strident purveyors of the idea that voting for any other party is a form of self-destructive folly. Their approach tends to escalate considerably come election time, during which apocalyptic scenarios are painted on the collective consciousness.
Labour progressives Socialists all over Europe have tended to push an anti-conservative agenda on matters which the French describe as moeurs, that is questions of morality and acceptable behaviour in society. In Italy, Portugal, France, Spain and several other Western European countries, left-wing parties stood – and still stand – for clear principles and values which have often shaped and sometimes radically changed those societies in important ways. Malta’s socialists have a rather more chequered history and identity, allowing their critics to point out the irony of the fact that today’s progressives and liberals were yesterday’s xenophobes and suppressors of free speech and human rights. Malta’s socialists, in other words, are tainted – at least as far as a sizeable chunk of the population is concerned – with a serious credibility problem which a friend of mine summed up with the line “Same old people, new rhetoric.”
The alternative voice It has been obvious for a while now that the type of liberal values that people have in mind when they use the generic statement ‘this country isn’t really European’ have been consistently upheld by Malta’s small green party which can be credited with having been consistent on a number of issues while being unburdened by credibility problems where free speech and human rights are concerned. Michael Briguglio is right, however, when he admits that Alternattiva has been timid in its approach on crucial matters and I support his call for a new militancy on several of these issues. Alternattiva’s strength in this scenario is precisely the fact that it can afford to take a clear stance in this battle of ideas. It can leave the wishy-washy, fence-sitting balancing acts or the ‘no comment’ approach to the two big parties.
‘I senza partito’ In practical terms, thousands of Maltese people are living and thinking about these matters outside the political prism – they don’t hang around waiting for the political parties to offer them solutions but are simply making use of the opportunities that cheap travel, a European Union passport and the internet have opened up for them. I know many people who have chosen this route – people who have totally disengaged from local politics and who choose to live in self-imposed exile from mainstream Maltese debate. When only 1% of university students turn up for a student demonstration against censorship, it isn’t hard to see why Maltese liberals often adopt a more individualistic approach to these matters. I respect the organisers for their initiative and courage but a measly group of 150 students is hardly the stuff proper ideological battles are made of.
Any comments?
If you wish your comments to be published in our Letters pages please click button below. Please write a contact number and a postal address where you may be contacted.
Search:
MALTATODAY
BUSINESSTODAY
Download MaltaToday Sunday issue front page in pdf file format
All the interviews from Reporter on MaltaToday's YouTube channel.
