[ANALYSIS] Is swinging Gozo Malta’s next electoral battleground?

If there is a district where one can measure the PN’s declining fortunes, it is Gozo - the only district which retained its territorial integrity in all post-war elections and the only one that switched from a clear PN majority to a slim PL majority.

The PN had seen its support drop by a staggering 11 points between 2003 and 2017, with Labour incrementally increasing its support until it clinched an absolute majority in the 2017 general election.

And this makes Gozo strategically important. Any hope of a PN recovery in the next election depends on a stronger performance in Gozo in what was once a safe PN district and which has become Malta’s only toss up region.

A recent MaltaToday poll showed that under Bernard Grech the PN has started making some inroads in Gozo. The survey gave the Opposition leader a trust rating of 45.5% as opposed to Abela’s 38.2% in Gozo, which was the only region where Grech enjoyed a greater trust than the Prime Minister.

The PN also gained the upper hand in Gozo with a score of 50.6%. But one still has to see whether this trend is confirmed in future surveys.

What is sure is that Abela is not taking any chances. In the latest reshuffle he re-appointed the popular Justyne Caruana to education minister, increasing the Gozitan representation in the Cabinet to three. This ensures a greater voice for Gozo at Cabinet level and accentuates the party’s power of incumbency in Gozo.

On his part, last Sunday Bernard Grech paid tribute to former ministers Anton Tabone and Giovanna Debono, both associated with the party’s glorious years in power. In doing so Grech has gone a long way in rehabilitating Debono, still considered a powerhouse of votes in Gozo, despite being forced out by former PN leader Simon Busuttil after her husband was arraigned in court accused of misappropriation of public funds.

Grech has also proposed the appointment of an elected regional council for Gozo and a referendum on the Gozo tunnel after all studies are completed.

Ironically, Labour leaders first made both proposals. Alfred Sant had proposed a regional council for Gozo in 1997 in a historic turnaround from the abolition of the Gozo Civic Council in 1973. Moreover, Sant’s proposed council was to be composed of elected mayors and MPs, and was overshadowed by the abolition of the post of Gozo minister, a decision that weakened the party’s standing in Gozo.

Instead Grech is proposing an elected assembly which does not replace the ministry. It remains to be seen what powers will be given to this assembly and how this new layer of regional government will fit in the institutional jigsaw which already includes 14 Gozitan local councils and a ministry. One crucial question is whether this assembly will have the power to raise funds.

It was former prime minister Joseph Muscat who had first proposed a referendum on the Gozo tunnel in 2014, but subsequently both sides of the House approved a parliamentary motion supporting the tunnel.

The risk for Grech here is that he could be running with both the hares and the hounds, proposing a referendum as a way to reconcile conflicting positions in his party.

While the promise of a referendum may keep the two sides on board, it also risks sending a conflicting message. It raises the question of why Gozo should have a veto over a national infrastructure project, which would also heavily impact the Pwales landscape in Malta.

Yet Grech’s tepid support for the tunnel may be an indication that the party is getting a different picture from the ground than that presented by surveys showing mass support for the tunnel, a proposal initiated by the Gonzi administration.

Gozo, which confirmed a strong anti-divorce majority in the 2011 referendum and a strong pro-hunting majority in the 2015 referendum, also presents a dilemma for the PN in its bid to retain its coalition of rural conservative voters and more liberal urbanites.

Labour defied the odds by gaining strength in Gozo despite its social liberalism, but significantly hunting was also added to Gozo Minister Clint Camilleri’s portfolio. Development permits are also a factor weighing on political choices. Upon the election of a Labour government a total of 497 submissions have been made in Gozo alone, seeking permission to extend the development zones on parcels of land kept outside the boundaries.

Swinging Gozo

Historically the PL has only clinched an absolute majority of votes in Gozo twice. The first victory hails back to 1955 when the 39-year-old Dom Mintoff, snatched an absolute majority of Gozitan votes, electing three of five Gozitan MPs.

The result, however, was a fluke. The PL would never win another absolute majority in Gozo till 2017.

The party was nearly wiped out from the conservative island at the height of the Church-State dispute, gaining just 6.3% of the Gozitan vote in the 1962 election and 22% in the 1966 election.

But after the Maltese Church lifted its moral sanctions on Labour activists in 1969, the party managed to double its vote scoring 44.8% in 1971.

Support for the PL was to slip again by 5% in the following decade, with the party registering one of its lowest ever Gozitan results in the 1981 election.

Surprisingly, led by incumbent Prime Minister Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici, support for Labour in Gozo defied the national trend which saw the PN winning the election with a slim absolute majority amid a tense political climate marked by economic decline, violence and institutionalised corruption.

Labour’s surge in Gozo could well be an indication that by 1987 the Labour Party had built strong patronage networks in Gozo.

But after being elected it was the PN, which managed to increase its majority in Gozo by five percentage points from 1987 to 1992 thanks to the economic boom and the appointment of Gozo’s first Minister Anton Tabone.

The PN’s increase in Gozo corresponded to the national trend which saw the PN widening its gap with Labour from a sheer 4,000 votes in 1987, to 13,000 nationally, five years later.

But following the first signs of economic decline, Labour saw its share of the vote increase by 5% in the 1996 election, which saw Alfred Sant becoming PM. While Labour increased its share of the vote by four percentage points on a national level, in Gozo it managed to increase its vote by five points.

On the other hand, the premature fall of Alfred Sant’s government during which the Gozo ministry post was removed, saw the party losing three points in Gozo as the PN was returned back to government with Giovanna Debono as Gozo minister. This also coincided with a spike in planning permits and increased concern on over development, which saw the Greens making limited inroads at local level.

The 2003 election saw Labour losing a further two points, dipping to 40.8% - its worst result in Gozo since 1992. This corresponded with a strong affirmation of the ‘Yes’ vote in Gozo in the EU referendum.

The Nationalist decline in Gozo commenced in 2008 when with Labour winning 42.9% of the Gozitan vote – an increase of two percentage points over its 2003 tally. But Labour still underperformed in Gozo and ended up losing the national election by 1,500 votes. Labour had actually recovered its 1998 level of support but its result was still 3% below the 46% gained in 1996. This suggests that Gozitans did not warm up to Sant again following the 1998 debacle.

Labour was to score its most spectacular result in 55 years just a year after its electoral defeat, when led by Muscat in MEP elections in 2009 it scored 48% against the PN’s 47.5%, thus becoming Gozo’s first party.

Yet the PN still clinched a wafer-thin relative majority of votes in 2013. It was only in 2017 that after five years in power the PL once again increased its votes to clinch an absolute majority of votes in Gozo. The result came in the wake of a spike in government jobs in Gozo.

This suggests that in order to narrow the gap in the next election Bernard Grech has to win Gozo again from the PL. On the other hand if Abela retains the same level of support in Gozo, he is also likely to retain Labour’s national advantage.