[ANALYSIS] The Trump effect in Malta: From draining the swamp to berating the establishment

As in the rest of Europe, most Maltese people never liked Donald Trump. Back in 2017 just months after his election, a MaltaToday survey showed that 68% of the Maltese had a negative impression of the newly elected US president. It also showed that a strong majority in both parties had a negative impression of the President – 74% among PN voters and 58% among PL voters.

But over the past four years, he also had a loyal Maltese fan base among immigrant-bashers and militant anti-abortionists who hail Trump’s appointment of conservative judges to the Supreme Court in the hope of overturning Roe v Wade. Some admirers are religious zealots like envangelical pastor Gordon Borg Manche and supporters of the Moviment Partrijotti Maltin. But there influence is limited, though Trump’s ascent emboldens the right wing. So how has Trump’s election impacted on the big boys and girls of Maltese politics?

How Labour played the anti-establishment card

While both major Maltese parties are ideologically closer to the US Democrats, their discourse and antics do sometimes carry a Trumpian imprint. This was clearly the case in the run-up to the 2017 general election.

In his first reaction to Trump’s victory former Prime Minister Joseph Muscat declared that it strengthens his “resolve never to become part of the establishment, but rather work to change it from within…”

Sure enough, Labour in Malta has evolved as a socially-liberal party promoting LGBTIQ rights and lately opening a debate on abortion. This puts Labour on the opposite side of the spectrum as Trump, but this is only part of the story.

Under both Muscat and Robert Abela, lashing at an abstract establishment associated with the Nationalist Party and the church has become a staple of Labour propaganda, more so in the absence of any antagonism to identifiable business elites like the Malta Developers Association, with which Labour has worked hand in hand.

Yet Abela repeatedly lashes out against Bernard Grech as a representative of the establishment while attacking him for not adhering to his mantra that Malta is “full up” on immigration, a slogan he coined, weaponised and repeatedly deployed in typical Trumpian fashion.

Labour’s readiness to jump on a Trumpian bandwagon betrays a creeping perception that the government’s pro-business policies are only self-serving policies benefitting a number of construction groups, some of which, like the Gasan and Tumas groups, also have a direct interest in the government’s energy policies.

Panamagate and the incestuous web linking Yorgen Fenech to Labour politicians and state officials exposed the existence of a parallel state in which former chief of staff Keith Schembri played a pivotal role. Possibly unable to rely on the networks of power shaping 25 years of PN governments, Muscat created an alternative in his bid to guarantee growth and stability without rocking the establishment’s boat, hence the departure from socialism.

To counter this perception, both Muscat and his successor presented themselves as strongmen in synch with popular aspirations, and as intermediaries between government and “families and business (who) want decision-makers to hear their real, unfiltered concerns”. This has weakened the role of party, the bureaucracy and parliament in holding the PM’s power in check. Both relished in comparing the slow modus operandi of past Nationalist governments with their faster way of doing things. But just as had happened in the US under Trump, checks and balances were alien to Muscat, whose popularity was based on unmediated trust of fired-up supporters.

For Muscat, one lesson from Trump’s victory was that “priorities are decided in homes and workplaces, not in palaces or newsrooms”. His reference to palaces and media in the same breath betrays increased nervousness towards media scrutiny.

And while Abela can be credited for breaking with the culture of impunity by removing officials and politicians implicated in the Daphne murder probe and often exposed in media reports, his party was quick to remind us that Eurobarometer surveys show that the government is more trusted than the media and that the Maltese media enjoys the lowest levels of trust in Europe.

Like Trump, Muscat and to a lesser extent Abela have pushed a narrative that prioritises economic growth over checks and balances. Even in his reaction to COVID-19, Abela was quick to prioritise a return to economic growth, dismissing the risks of a second wave. Unliek Trump, he adhered to scientific orthodoxy and expressed pride in Malta’s high swabbing rates rather than blaming swabbing for inflating COVID-19 figures.

The PN’s shift from establishment to insurgency

Former PN leader Simon Busuttil’s first dignified reaction to Trump’s victory in 2016 was a sober tweet expressing concern on the global uncertainty created by Trump’s ascent to power. But reacting to Muscat’s anti-establishment tirades a few days later, the PN leader insisted that the prime minister was, together with Konrad Mizzi and Keith Schembri, part of a “corrupt establishment” leading Malta.

Busuttil’s assessment of the US election changed to one of “a vote against the establishment and the concentrated powers that favour the few” and invited the Maltese to take “lessons from the US election and vote to remove the establishment”.

But the kind of establishment which US voters voted against in 2016 was more akin to the PN’s 25-year balancing act between cronyism and nominally adhering to institutional norms than to Muscat’s governance which was based on getting things done even at the cost of thwarting the rules.

Four years on, Busuttil’s claim that “the establishment in Malta is the prime minister and the two people around him who were found to have set up secret companies in Panama,” has been substantially vindicated. But his 2017 electoral campaign also weaponised unsubstantiated claims on Egrant from Daphne Caruana Galizia’s blog. Some aspects of the PN’s campaign, like memes suggesting jail terms for the Muscats, was reminiscent of Trump’s “lock her up” slogan.

By projecting himself as an insurgent candidate, Busuttil, a former deputy leader of a centrist party firmly entrenched in power networks for 25 years, wore a shoe which did not fit him. It put his authenticity in question in an election where Labour pinpointed this contradiction, while presenting Muscat and his family as victims of a campaign orchestrated by an establishment desperate on returning to power. In many ways, playing the anti-establishment card distorted the optics of the PN, attracting firebrands like Salvu Mallia and Marlene Farrugia, while alienating support among business owners keen on stability.

Ironically, following his defeat it was Adrian Delia who played the anti-establishment card to secure his election in a contest among party members, following which he was keener on emphasising his party’s conservative values on issues like abortion while hitting out at the influx of foreign workers. This sometimes verged on the loony right, and internet-misinformation always lurked too close to Delia: like Edwin Vassallo sharing a “warning” about bananas injected with “blood containing HIV and AIDS” from his personal profile.

By hitting hard on his own party’s ‘elitism’, Delia further confirmed Labour’s narrative. But adding credibility to that narrative were vocal exponents of the anti-Delia camp, illustrated some months ago by lawyer Andrew Borg Cardona’s depiction of Delia supporters as “third-tier Nationalists”.

Ultimately, another outsider who is more in tune with his party’s centrist identity dethroned Delia. Bernard Grech’s budget speech indicated that his priority will be that of projecting his party as an alternative government. But can he achieve that in the absence of a populist appeal, which was absent in his first major speech?

What is the establishment?

While both major parties are partly right in depicting their adversary as being close to certain vested interests, “the establishment” is a very flexible term which can be comfortably used by anyone who feels excluded, irrespective of other more real distinctions like wealth, power and status.

In this way, building speculators who felt excluded from the restricted circle of beneficiaries before 2013 could easily identify with Labour’s anti-establishment mantra. Moreover, determining who is part of the establishment is tricky, depending on who is writing the narrative.

While a Trump supporter in the USA is likely to see the liberal media, environmentalists, the civil rights lobby and the bureaucracy as pillars of the establishment, left-wingers are more likely to refer to the power of big business and lobbies like the National Rifle Association.

In a country like Malta, where ideological lines are blurred, both parties are likely to pick and choose, putting their adversaries in the establishment camp and their allies in the pro-change camp.

At the same time both parties are prone to be subjected to the pressures of lobby groups ranging from gun-toting hunters to powerful financial groups who seek to influence policy-making to further their interests.

In this context, as in the USA, culture wars on immigration and defence of hunting traditions may offer a distraction from much needed reforms addressing the need for a firewall between lobbyists and politicians, which came to the fore following the arrest of business tycoon Yorgen Fenech and the fall of the Muscat government.