After the post-election agitation settles, what are we left with? Three takeaways.
First, do not look for victors, actual or moral, not even among the third parties and independents.
Arnold Cassola fought a good fight. His achievement this year arguably eclipses his larger 2004 tally. Then, he was Alternattiva Demokratika’s lead candidate. This time, he was alone.
Last time, he was the beneficiary of a huge vote of gratitude from pro-Europeans who wanted to acknowledge AD’s pro-EU activism the previous year, when the country voted for membership. This time, Cassola earned each vote on his own personal steam.
It’s a remarkable achievement but, by the only measure that matters, he lost. If Sunday’s result leads us to conclude, correctly, that both major political parties are in trouble, the same yardstick shows that Cassola has only limited appeal as a competitive political candidate.
His result is significant because he outshone every third political party, not just the other independent candidates. In comparison, ADPD doesn’t register with voters at the national level. Right now, if change is to come to Maltese politics, it doesn’t look like it’s going to be at the hands of third parties.
Which brings us to the Nationalist Party’s result. It lost, but not in any meaningful way. On the contrary, the PN is buzzing for the first time since 2008, when it won the general election by a whisker. It’s been a long time since the PN could smell blood.
Joseph Muscat’s Labour managed to shatter the PN’s morale. Now, the confidence is back. The revitalised energy will boost the PN’s activism and attractiveness to new candidates.
It wouldn’t have happened without Roberta Metsola but nor could she have succeeded alone. It took the PN’s organisation and, ultimately, the credit should go to the leader, Bernard Grech.
That said, the result also shows the PN’s deficit of appeal. You can’t observe that Labour’s vote is the lowest in 60 years without adding that the PN’s is lower still – several percentage points lower than what, in their day, Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici and Alfred Sant could count on getting, even when they were losing general elections by a wide margin.
Can the PN eliminate this deficit without a change in the top echelons? The polls suggest not. We shall see.
Which leaves us with Labour’s result. Its victory is meaningless, given the shocking loss of vote-share. But we shouldn’t give too much importance to the post-election recrimination on social media. That’s the anger of people who care about the party and want to see it recover. They’re not walking away; they’re committed.
Many voters have become accustomed to Labour largesse with favours. How can their appetites be tamed without another backlash like Sunday’s?
The significant issue is another. Robert Abela says it’s time to take the “difficult decisions”, which include good governance and sustainable development. But that’s nothing short of changing the Labour machine’s business model. But can the business model be reformed without risking collapse?
This isn’t the first time Abela has announced it’s the time for difficult decisions. He said it in 2020, when his government declared that economic growth couldn’t continue along an ecologically unsustainable path. Four years later, we have made no progress. Instead, we’ve regressed.
In the lead-up to the 2022 general election, Abela was in full announcement mode again. He presented himself as the man who could reform Labour from within. His electoral programme was full of promises “to begin discussions” on good governance and ecological policies. Two years on, he’s still promising to start.
The difference is that, in 2024, he can no longer appeal to “discipline”, as he did in 2020. He has earned himself the reputation of being among the least disciplined and most pampered members of his government.
Nor can he rely on 2020’s narrative of a “few bad apples” that spoiled Labour’s reputation. There have been too many massive scandals, even on his watch, that show that corruption is spread wide, not limited to a few.
It was Muscat who deregulated the environment and economy to pander to cronies, while decision-making was centralised and personalised to practise systemic patronage. But Abela has continued to milk that system.
If he honestly wants change now, it’s going to be more difficult than it would have been four years ago.
First, many voters have become accustomed to Labour largesse with favours. How can their appetites be tamed without another backlash like Sunday’s?
Second, many ministers will be reluctant to give up the little fiefdoms they’ve built. The massive loss of electoral support means that, at the next general election, some of them will be risking their seats (since Labour has been over-performing since 2013). They will be sorely tempted to use their powers of patronage to secure their personal position.
But it won’t be business as usual. Civil servants, looking at their colleagues hauled to court in the wake of the Vitals inquiry, will be reluctant to cooperate with a minister who’s breaking the rules.
We can expect the leaks to the press to continue.
Abela may well say he won’t postpone the difficult decisions any longer. But postponing for four years means it’s even more difficult now than it was then.
It’s not impossible. He might pull it off. But, realistically, it may take someone else to attempt, in two-and-a-half years, what Abela has been reluctant to do in four.
This column was written before the local council election results were announced.