The PN problem that dare not speak its name

The Nationalist Party holds its general council this weekend in, as it knows, a predicament; but what kind of predicament?

It is variously accused of having no strategy, no strategists and no vision, among other inconveniences. The first two accusations are untrue, I happen to think, but these are points I shall return to on a future occasion, after I hear what is said this weekend. However, there is one aspect of its predicament that the PN will not address tomorrow or ever: just how the electoral successes of 2003 were the seedbed of its current unpopularity.

We have a published description of the campaign strategy of the 2003 referendum and election in the European Yearbook of Political Campaigning 2003. The author of the Malta chapter is Joe Saliba, the PN general secretary who was, of course, a key member of the PN strategy group from 1998-2003 when the EU campaign was being hatched and fought. His authorship does not make the chapter suspect - on the contrary, we get to know how this strategist and others were thinking inside their bunker.

When Malta resumed negotiations with the EU in December 1999, a PN poll indicated that 51.5 per cent of the population thought the EU was bad or very bad for Malta. And it boded a bad trend: in February 1998, only 47.4 per cent thought likewise.

The PN proceeded by analytically splitting up the population into seven sectors. It determined the percentage shift that had occurred in each sector between 1998 and 1999. For example, a two-three per cent shift to a yes vote had occurred among housewives but a one-two per cent shift to a no vote had occurred among those aged 25-34 and among the self-employed.

Interpreting people's fears of the EU, the PN drew up a strategy made up of five plans of action, covering the training of activists, events and discussions. It analysed the Malta Labour Party's strategy. And it implemented a strategy to address seven specific challenges, each of which was subdivided into several points.

Some of the campaign details smack of voodoo marketing. Take the sartorial politics of the pictures: The billboards showed Eddie Fenech Adami hugging a child wearing a red top, a young worker in a red sweater, two young children, one dressed in blue, the other in red; all meant to support subliminally the overt general message that the EU issue was above partisan politics. I never noticed the significance of the clothes' colours while driving my car past those billboards and I know no one who did.

But this kind of obsessive attention to detail, every tiny one just in case it matters, the almost comically assiduous attempt to leave no aspect of voter psychology, however occult, unaddressed, tells us something about how finely these spinners weave their webs of significance: they err on the side of plotting too much, not too little. It also tells us something about the massive energy that went into the campaign.

By the time the referendum was held, the yes vote had gained 5.5 per cent over what it had been in late 1999 - an average gain of just under two per cent per year.

All this came at a price - a price this column pointed out more than once during those years. Much of the government's energy was concentrated on the EU issue. Cabinet government virtually stopped, with each minister focusing on his patch only. Ministers who were eager to get on with necessary structural reforms were given a signal not to rock the EU boat. Even if the specific reform were not tied to EU membership, it was strongly believed that Alfred Sant would be sure to say it was.

Even this column, which was critical of this general approach then (for example, with respect to what this meant for PBS reform), has to acknowledge one fact. Although the referendum result was 54 per cent for the yes vote, the polls indicated a 57 per cent result going into the final week. It is possible that those three percentile points were lost because of last-minute MLP allegations about EU membership that could not be addressed in time.

So the vote was volatile. It required hard, constant work to give the yes vote a majority. And it involved a crucial decision: since EU membership and internal non-EU related reforms could not be achieved simultaneously, because the pain of the latter would be blamed on the EU, one had to come before the other. And since EU membership was reckoned by the PN to be the most advantageous environment in which to tackle the other reforms, it took priority.

Here, then, is the PN's problem: It stands accused of delaying necessary reforms, of only tackling them now; but it cannot turn round and tell the majority of Maltese, which wanted EU membership: "Have you forgotten that we delayed these reforms so that you could get EU membership?"

The obvious cannot be officially stated. This is far from being the only problem the PN currently faces. But it is a niggling one.

ranierfsadni@europe.com