Labour’s contact with voters has been “eroded” and must be re-established, Joseph Muscat has warned in a reaction to the MEP and local council elections results.

“Labour’s answer should be to re-establish contact with its voters, core and marginal, something that all now admit has been eroded,” the former Labour leader and prime minister said when contacted for comment by Times of Malta.

“In doing so, it has to continue being a broad church for progressives and moderates rather than embarking on kneejerk reactions, well-intentioned and welcome as they might be, which are not properly thought out and which need an unequivocal electoral mandate. There needs to be a clear strategy and rationale to unite rather than divide for change.”

The PN, on the other hand, had made no major inroads and was “mostly running on the spot,” he said.

Parties must know what they stand for, he added: the independent candidates were more authentic than the two big parties on that front.

What about him?

When pushed to say whether he feels responsible in any way for shifting the vote, in one way or the other, he simply replied: “It is up to people to judge my contribution.”

“I will not enter into the merits of the Labour result. Is it because of Joseph Muscat (both positively and negatively)? Is it because of government performance? Is it because of personal issues? Experience has taught me that trying to box electors in stereotypes is usually an elusive exercise.”

Muscat was taken to court just over a week before the elections and accused of bribery, corruption and other crimes in connection with the government concession of three hospitals to the Vitals Healthcare Group in 2015. He pleaded not guilty as a large crowd outside the law courts chanted its support. 

Labour saw its majority dramatically slashed in the MEP elections of June 8.

Last week the local councils elections confirmed a slightly better result for Labour, albeit with losses in most localities, but one major discussion around the surprising outcome is whether Muscat’s arraignment helped get out the Labour vote or put off more people.

The arguably bigger mystery is whether the hundreds of people who showed up outside court in support of Muscat on his arraignment day caused the voter haemorrhage to grow even worse.

Muscat would not comment on this issue but analysed the result as “a case of the party needing to change to meet the needs of the society which it is helping change, unless it wants to become a victim of its own success”.

This should not be done through social media but through “real and genuine face time with people” who still want Labour to lead the country, and not by relying on the “agenda-ridden opinions of pundits”, he said.

‘Celebration jarred’

“To be clear, I can find no fault in Labour’s campaign. It was extremely well organised and focused. The only thing that was out of synch was the reaction to the European election result. The celebration on Sunday afternoon jarred with the general feeling of Labour voters when taking in the vote,” he said.

In his view, Labour leaning voters voted in a “measured and ponderate” way. They wanted to “dent, rather than slash” the government’s majority to keep it more grounded, and so they moved away from their party mostly in the vote they believed affected government the least. This means they went “to the stretch of voting in different ways on the two ballots they cast simultaneously on the same day”.

“So much for the myth of the blinkered Labour voter.

“This can be characterised as a ‘soft’ defection, the extent of which will have probably shocked even those who participated themselves, and who wanted to dent rather than slash the government’s towering majority in order to keep it more grounded.”

PN made limited gains

Muscat said the PN, on the other hand, made limited gains in both elections, as the PL’s lost votes shifted mainly towards abstention, spoilt ballots and independent candidates.

It did fair “marginally better” in the MEP elections, he said, but “its share of votes continued to hover just over the 40 per cent mark in both elections, a range it has not managed to detach itself from over the past decade and a half”.

“PN is going nowhere unless it stops its fringe groups from forging for it a stand based on the politics of hate and envy, be it perceived or otherwise. If it is simply happy with reducing the gap through the partial losses of others, rather than its own gains, then it does so at its own risk,” he said.

There was one thing independent candidates did better than the big parties, Muscat said. And that was seeming authentic.

Any political force must know what it stands for and that should not be a “collection of empty words or a generic term like the ones we are mostly hearing recently,” he said. It should be connected to the real needs of Malta’s extended middle class, including those who aspire to become part of it.

“Phrases like ‘governance’ in the opposition hymn sheet, or ‘quality of life’ in the government playbook, as favoured as they might be by talking heads, sound hollow and detached in the ears of many people,” he said.

“This time round, independent candidates have come across as more authentic, answering clearly what they stand for in the way they connect to people.

“Arnold Cassola might have garnered a record number of votes, but the real top performer was Conrad Borg Manché, who tallied imp

ressive results in both ballots with a modest budget, limited channels and without resorting to repetitive stunts. My experience of Conrad is that he can be a real pain but he is genuine and I do hope he returns to Labour.”

He also added that although most independents still lack the credibility to break through the system, people are growing increasingly comfortable voting for them and in five years there will be many more people, especially the younger generation, who will emerge into public life through that route.

 

Muscat also said that those who judged the political situation before the outcome of the local councils election had passed mostly superficial and premature remarks as they failed to allow for all the facts to come out to shed a clearer light on the situation.

Leading pollster Vince Marmarà’s surveys were “spot on with regards to the PN share of votes”, he said, adding that despite the polls failing to gauge the extent of Labour’s partial dissent, they remain “the best electoral prediction tool” and that “Marmarà is, by far, the country’s most reliable pollster”.