Deciphering Gonzism - what the Prime Minister told his centre-right friends

It is a rare occasion when Maltese political leaders express their ideological leanings. Lawrence Gonzi's speech last Wednesday to the meeting of his Christian-democrat counterparts of the European People's Party in Florence was one such occasion for a Maltese party leader.

It is easy to fall into the trap of interpreting the speech as reflecting two sides of Gonzi: a conservative inspired by Pope Ratzinger's obsession with relativism, mixed with a mildly progressive sensibility to immigration and a centrist approach to economic policy. But probably, these are two sides of the same coin of Gonzi's limited but coherent vision of the world.

What is most striking is Gonzi's yearning for some mythical golden age when societies were more cohesive and in line with his value system. It's a vision that ignores the fact that values like "solidarity" only took root because of the very struggles for emancipation by excluded social groups during the past century. 

Alongside social democracy, post-war Christian democracy played a large role in moulding a European social model which institutionalised the outcome of these struggles for social justice.

But ironically, the word "relativism" used by Gonzi in his speech is often used by dominant elites like those of the Vatican to condemn struggles for equality and emancipation by excluded social groups like gays and lesbians.

Gonzi's rhetoric seems to be heavily influenced by Pope Benedict's philosophy, which condemns equality movements like those campaigning for same-sex marriage as being 'morally relativist', a clear misnomer considering that these are also inspired by universal values.

It is not surprising that in the wake of his anti-divorce stance, many interpreted Gonzi's appeal to the "common good" to refer exclusively to moral issues, especially now that he faces legislation his government wants to introduce (on pain of electoral calculations) on cohabiting partnerships for both opposite and same-sex couples, and IVF, the latter coming with a ban on embryo freezing.

The PN is notorious for referring to the "common good" when it comes to issues of morality and personal choices, and less frequently on social and environmental issues. 

But this time around, Gonzi made a deliberate effort to refer to the "common good" in terms of the current social and economic crisis. His critique of financial markets and credit-rating agencies undermining democratically-elected governments and their job-creating efforts is valid even if his government is the first to congratulate itself whenever it is given a positive certificate by the same financial institutions and agencies like Moody's.

Unfortunately, his analysis of the financial crisis is limited.

Rather than proposing a critique of deregulation and financial speculation, as the late Peter Serracino Inglott often did in his later writings, Gonzi seems to think the matter can be reduced to question of values: "How precious is the human life today? By precious I do not mean only the sanctity of the human person throughout the whole cycle of life but I also mean the dignity of the human person - a dignity that remains a central feature of our policies and our political activities. Have we not - in a sense - subjected this human dignity to the dignity of the financial markets?"

Contrast this with Serracino Inglott's more radical critique. Writing after the European elections of 2009, the once PN ideologue decried that the solution to Europe's problems was a departure - on a global scale - from the policies, which led to the public debt crisis, namely "the Reagan-Thatcher all-privatising right-wing revolution, pursued ever since then by such politicians whose aim was getting voted into power rather than beliefs in definite policies as Blair, Berlusconi and Sarkozy."

As a result of this, the economy slipped entirely out of the hands of public authority and into those of speculative financiers. "This take-over inevitably led to the drying up of really productive investment."

Apart from hinting at the need to revamp the Common Agricultural Policy which diverts 45% of the EU budget, all that Gonzi could propose was to go "back to basics" rather than concrete measures like the Tobin Tax, a tax on financial transaction which he opposes to protect Malta's budding financial sector. 

Surely Gonzi's appeal to fiscal prudence is laudable: "What values lie at the root of policies that give the impression that public spending has no limits? That we run into mountains of debt and shift the burden onto our children?"

But it's doubtful whether Gonzi will uphold these values in the run-up to the next election. Prudence was surely lacking before the 2008 election when the power of incumbency was used fully with overspending ministries.

Gonzi also seems to ignore the fact that the defence of the "common good" also depends on rational public spending. And it has been his government to resort to public spending to help manufacturing firms avoid lay-offs, the feather in his 'safe hands' cap.

Still, Gonzi's aversion to CAP subsidies is reflected in his local policies aimed at reducing spending on energy subsidies while supposedly favouring spending on infrastructure, job creation and education. In this sense, Gonzi faces a contradiction: on one hand he seems to position himself in the pro-austerity camp, while on the other hand he questioned whether politicians wanted to keep credit-rating agencies happy, instead of helping the jobless and those who cannot afford their university education.

While reducing the crisis of global capitalism to a crisis of values sounds simplistic, Gonzi is right in prioritising shared common values (enshrined in international law) when he speaks about immigration. On this issue Gonzi faced a centre-right audience (some of which resort to this populism themselves) with a speech worthy of a progressive centre-left leader.

Gonzi reaffirmed that the rescue of asylum seekers - where he termed irregular immigration as a vote-loser - was part of the country's non-negotiable values. "Do I succumb to the populist approach and pretend there is nothing I should do because this is somebody else's problem? Or do I translate this non-negotiable value into practice, and do everything I can to save those lives at sea?"

Contrast this to the Labour Party's constant appeal to the "national interest" and its pandering to those who feel threatened by immigration.

What Gonzi seems to forget is that responsibility towards migrants does not stop at rescuing them on the high seas: his detention policies actually violate the "non-negotiable" values of others.

Because what Gonzi seems to fail to understand is that different people have different non-negotiable values which he cannot label as "relativist" simply because those people want to extend rights to categories like gay people. To them equality is a non-negotiable value.

Ultimately what is non-negotiable or not can only be determined by the global community. That is why we have international laws and conventions, which one is duty bound to consider as non-negotiable.

But values are not cast in stone, and values can change for better or for worse. In this sense, Gonzi seems too keen on the certainties offered by his Catholic upbringing, thanks to which he is mildly sensitive to the plight of migrants but less so to the plight of other social groups: the contradiction of a politician who sometimes vaguely sounds like Obama but whose conservatism is more akin to the Tea Party fringe.