It’s become the conventional wisdom that Robert Abela should call a general election soon: to exploit the chaotic indiscipline crucifying the Nationalist Party. But the truth is the reverse. If Abela needs an early general election, it is for defensive housekeeping purposes.
As far as the PN goes, the threat of a general election is stronger than the execution. As long as the spectre of a general election persists, the more inward-looking the PN remains, dealing itself a death by a thousand cuts. Adrian Delia will remain undislodged while leaders-in-waiting bide their time in the hope of making a start after the inevitable massive defeat, not before.
Abela’s real challenge concerns the key motif he’s chosen to characterise not just his rhetoric but his first actions. That key word in his political vocabulary, which distinguishes him from Joseph Muscat, is ‘discipline’.
Abela has used it to describe the Maltese as a people. It’s more than just a single value. It’s an emblematic one. It sums up others: integrity, loyalty, focus, the right priorities, sobriety, sacrifice.
He has used it as a rallying call to Labour activists. He’s meant it to mean many things at once: a call to self-restraint; party unity; a rejection of the ‘few bad apples’ that plunged Labour into a crisis a few months ago. He has also said that his task in restoring Malta’s reputation abroad will be to tell the international critics that “we are a disciplined people”.
‘Discipline’ might have been chosen intuitively but certainly not at random. It involves the building of self-image. Self-control has been the motif chosen by Abela’s spin doctors when circulating photos and choice quotes of either the young Abela as body-builder or the new prime minister piloting a motor launch.
Let’s not waste time on the contrast with the notoriously undisciplined Delia. It’s worth pausing on the contrast with Muscat. The king of bling watches and Dubai holidays treated voters primarily as consumers. He distributed iced-buns instead of teaching people how to bake.
Discipline, however, is a word linked to productivity. It’s a motivational word of the aspirational classes. It’s linked to fairness and merit – you get out what you put in. It’s also linked to social order and good behaviour in individuals, schools and neighbourhoods. All these virtues were seen as lacking in Malta under Muscat’s government – even by Labour supporters.
There is no irony in saying that Abela’s value of discipline remains hostage to Muscat’s disgraceful legacy
The real political merit in ‘discipline’ as a tool of persuasion is that it can serve a dual function. It enables Abela to show that he is keeping pace with his core support and the public mood. He’s not out of touch. On the contrary, he understands and represents what they want. However, ‘discipline’ is also a rallying cry by which Abela can get people to follow him in adjusting to changes he must make.
At some point, contractions in the business cycle will begin to make themselves felt. It might be through no fault of Abela’s policies but it will be his responsibility to address the first pockets – perhaps the retail or the rental sectors – to be affected.
Discipline will need to mean fiscal discipline. And environmental discipline, if other economic sectors are to be protected, let alone quality of life. And health discipline, if the sector is to make the necessary transition to preventive medicine, digital health and rational use of resources.
But this is a long-term view. In the short term, the call to discipline can easily come to sound fake.
For there will be increasing public calls to impose discipline on various members of his parliamentary group. It still includes Muscat, Konrad Mizzi, Chris Cardona and Edward Scicluna, all of whom might find themselves embroiled further in scandal.
Every week brings new shocking revelations being made to the public inquiry into Daphne Caruana Galizia’s assassination, while others emerge in the court cases involving the alleged trigger men and mastermind. Each revelation throws a shadow not just on Muscat’s reign but on his very office.
Within a few months, the public inquiry will finalise its report. We cannot predict its conclusions, of course, but on the present evidence we have to deem it likely that it will contain scathing references to Panamagate and other scandals. We can certainly be sure that the pressure on Abela to take disciplinary action against Muscat and Mizzi will grow.
Then there is the magisterial inquiry into the VGH hospitals deal, which could decide it merits proper police investigation. On present evidence, that’s not an unlikely scenario. In which case three Labour MPs – Mizzi, Cardona and Scicluna – would be marked for ‘discipline’.
It is enough to contemplate these scenarios as possible to see how Abela’s attempt to sound credible on discipline would be destroyed if he does nothing. He would have to take action against a current minister, former leader and a current deputy leader and his predecessor. Or else he’d lose his chance to be taken seriously, at home and abroad.
However, a general election this year would greatly shrink the problem. Muscat would retire. Scicluna, aged 73, has good reason to do so. Cardona might be persuaded (not least because years ago he had announced he’d stand down around this time). It leaves Mizzi, who can’t take a hint, but that’s a much more manageable problem.
The reports would still be, very likely, scathing – but the problem of imposing discipline would no longer be Abela’s as party leader. He would no longer face the damaging prospect of taking divisive action against Labour stalwarts before a general election.
He would still have other appointments to meet: with the Council of Europe and Moneyval. But an early election would give him a personal new mandate. He can face his international critics bolstered by popularity at home. And any disciplinary measures he would still need to take at home would not be conflicted with the pressures of a general election still to come.
There is no irony in saying that Abela’s value of discipline remains hostage to Muscat’s disgraceful legacy. The more you believe Abela is right to identify discipline as a key Labour value, the more hijacked Labour must have been in the last several years.