Joseph Muscat’s impending departure from the Auberge de Castille brings to a close the sixth Labour premiership since 1947. The turbulent circumstances surrounding his resignation call to mind a pattern: each of his Labour predecessors in the most powerful office in the land departed the office prematurely and in a situation of political or constitutional crisis: Paul Boffa in 1950; Dom Mintoff in 1958 and again in 1984; Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici in 1987; Alfred Sant in 1998; and now Muscat, merely two years and six months after a second, spectacular electoral victory.
This sequence is part of a paradox. Since the end of World War II, the Labour Party has consistently pioneered crucial innovations in Maltese politics, innovations that transformed politics and won handsome electoral dividends.
Labour was the first mass-membership party; the first to strike strategic electoral bargains with rising socio-economic groups, beginning with trade unions in the 1950s and climaxing with big business in 2013. Labour early understood the power of the press, broadcasting and, more recently, social media, in influencing voter worldviews and aspirations. As an electoral machine, the Labour Party consistently leads the field. In government, too, Labour is associated with some of the most important development strategies and policy initiatives from which Malta has benefited: universal welfare services, infrastructural investments; during the past six years, it has presided over rapid economic growth, albeit riding on a strategy first conceived by the preceding Nationalist government.
Why, then, do its stints at the helm of the state invariably end in crisis? Two possible explanations come to mind.
One is that, for all its creativity in politics and government, it has taken rigid, mistaken and ultimately unsuccessful stances on the strategic choices facing the country: the Integration scheme of the 1950s comes immediately to mind, a vision of state-led development of the 1970s and early 1980s that fell prey to virulent clientelism, and decades-long opposition to European integration.
By creating a cult of personality, the leader hollows out the party organs, and transforms democratic politics into tribalism
The party’s leaders remained inflexibly committed to these policies even when it became clear that they were failing, only to make dramatic, radical and apparently unconditional changes of direction. For all the sophistication of its electoral strategies and the visionary quality of many of its policies, the party’s approach to strategic national choices is almost always doctrinaire, confrontational and poorly thought through. The shift of position that failure induces then smacks more of political opportunism than of a conviction born of penetrating study, consultation and deliberation.
All of this points to another, perhaps more serious explanation for the crisis-mired ending of Labour governments: a tradition of leadership that is flawed and dysfunctional.
In marked contrast to the Nationalist Party, only one of the Labour Party’s leaders – Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici – has been a lawyer by profession. Mifsud Bonnici himself specialised in labour and employment law rather than civil, criminal or constitutional law like his Nationalist peers. He was, arguably, cast in the ‘technocratic’ mould of the other Labour Party leaders – Boffa the physician, Mintoff the architect, Sant and Muscat the economists.
Here, perhaps, lies a clue to the party’s leadership style: the technical, specialist outlook of these professions tends perhaps to accentuate the ‘Big Man’ pattern that is characteristic of Maltese politics and, indeed, the politics of numerous countries. If this is the case, the ‘big man’ of Labour vintage not only fancies himself a master of political manoeuvring, a visionary, a decisive leader and, where necessary, a ruthless ‘fixer’: he may also see himself as an omniscient expert.
Compounded together, these ingredients make for a pattern of leadership that brooks little opposition within and outside its own house. Internal dissent is neutralised by intimidation or co-optation, while external opposition is demonised and harrassed. By creating a cult of personality, the leader hollows out the party organs and transforms democratic politics into tribalism.
The ‘Expert Big Man’, then, regards deliberation, expert advice, prudence and legal and administrative routines as obstacles to be swept aside or circumvented. In so doing, he subverts the rule of law that protects ordinary people and neutralises the governing institutions that stabilise politics, regularise government and conserve the State as an entity transcending leaders, factions, parties, issues and sectoral interests.
There is one other point to make that is particularly relevant to Malta’s past and present experience: this pattern of leadership is inherently confrontational and, consequently, engenders political violence.
The Labour Party is about to select a successor to Muscat. Will the next leader perpetuate the flawed, dysfunctional leadership model that brings both the party and the country to recurring crises? Will the Maltese people be able to look to the Labour Party for leadership that is as prudent, steady and sound at the tiller of the Ship of State as it is shrewd, skilful and creative at the hustings?
Edward Warrington is associate professor, Department of Public Policy, University of Malta.