Try clean dancing

Can the change in the leadership of the governing Nationalist Party bring about an attempt to alter the way our political class plays its game? A hardened cynic may not bother to deliberate on that question and dismiss it by grunting: "You must be kidding!"

A realist without illusions, I suggest, should resist cynicism and point out that this is, at least, an opportunity for a new start.

Not the dawn of a new era - politics is based on an underlying continuity that cannot be broken. It is a grim competition where each side tries to score and win.

The basic hope that should spring eternal in society's mind is that the competition can take place according to fair rules and with good behaviour, no matter how aggressive.

In every sport participants compete aggressively. Yet to play aggressively a tennis player need not try to hit the ball into his opponent's body. A footballer can be aggressive without fouling.

Actually when one fouls, one loses out. Ask Gary Neville of Manchester United - as aggressive as they make them, but generally fair. In a recent match he butted a player, was sent off, was suspended for several matches, hurting his side and his standing, apart from being fined a packet by his own club.

He will be back, more aggressive than ever, but ever more careful not to exceed the limit. That is why he will remain a valuable member of the Manchester and England squad, and deserving of continuing to be an ambassador to promote Malta to be loved and visited as he loves and visits it himself.

What a realist should expect from this opportunity is not a convergence of the beliefs, strategies and actions of our political parties. That could be a step towards a one-party state at worse, or to dull politics that blunt the cutting edge of democracy. That is not what the national interest is all about.

In democracies parties merely transit through their time in government or in opposition. The role of an opposition - it would be silly as well as dangerous to forget - is to oppose.

Silly because politicians compete for the power that comes along with winning an election, so that they can influence the future of their society and country according to their ideology and vision.

And dangerous because, without the relentless clash of clearly contrasting visions and strategies, societies and countries would become stagnant backwaters, with a static political class serving no one and nothing but itself.

Working in the national interest cannot mean, for instance, that the political parties should have agreed on membership of the EU. Or on non-membership, for that matter.

With the electorate having given a clear decision that Malta should be part of the enlargement of the EU that will happen on May 1, it is in the national interest not to attempt to disrupt accession. But it was just as much in the national interest that there should have been clear alternatives put to the electorate to decide on.

And it remains in the national interest that the Opposition, while accepting membership as a fact of life, should continue to assess it critically, something in fact which the government itself ought to do.

It is in the national interest to agree on a framework of taxation, with the parties continually revising how they feel rates and allowances, if any, should be set to promote initiative and enterprise and bring about redistribution of income and wealth according to their respective vision of a good society.

The national interest would demand collaboration between the parties if there was, say, an external threat to our security, and in times of war. It points towards the benefits of limited consensus to try to address social and economic problems that become too big, deep and intractable for any government to tackle on its own.

Beyond such clearly defined areas, the national interest itself demands that political parties and politicians should not grow too cosy together. That they contrast each other with clearly defined and properly argued alternatives.

What the national interest does not require or want is that the contrast should take the form of misleading with spins, twists, or outright lies, rather than leading with thought-out and reasoned proposals offered with conviction, but never as absolute, inviolate conclusions. Or that opponents target each other, rather than each other's arguments.

At present the game of politics is not played aggressively, but fairly. Rather, it brims with viciousness. Never mind that it is replete with spin and rhetoric. It is above all marked by personal attacks. The style and content of current politics has sunk to lows not plumbed in the worst phases of our political evolution.

It is not just that our politicians disagree about everything. That remains the nature of politics, the way opposing parties seek to differentiate themselves from each other. The adversarial nature of Maltese politics mirrors the cultural disposition to divide over any issue - be it local festas, domestic and - more ridiculously so - foreign football clubs and national teams, among myriad matters.

Much less is it that political parties and politicians seek to fulfil their democratic function of designing and offering contrasting visions and strategies. There is a fundamental divide, incorporating disgust for the other side little short of hatred, fanned daily and relentlessly by the party radios in particular.

All that is negative in our way of doing politics is symbolised by the way the political leaders of the two main parties talk about and address each other.

It has not always been so. There could be no deeper divide than that of the terrible Sixties, the decade of Malta's ugly second politico-religious dispute. And yet the two national political leaders, George Borg Olivier and Dom Mintoff, as politically aggressive towards each other as could be, respected one other.

As a young Labour MP between 1962 and 1966, I marvelled that it could be so. I never heard Mr Mintoff utter a single word of denigration towards Dr Borg Olivier as a person. Not just in the heated debates in the House, or at the raucous weekly mass meetings, but neither in the national executive of the Labour Party. Nor did I ever get to know that the Nationalist leader had ever attacked Mr Mintoff personally.

That remained the case during 1971-77, when the roles were reversed, and Mr Mintoff was PM and Dr Borg Olivier Opposition leader.

The chemistry changed dramatically when Eddie Fenech Adami replaced Dr Borg Olivier. He is 17 years younger than Mr Mintoff. In 1977 when the Labour leader was 60 to Dr Fenech Adami's 43, that was a significant factor.

PN propagandists did not fail to play it up. Even before that happened Mr Mintoff could never relate to Dr Fenech Adami, of whom he was so dismissive when the news of his election to PN leader was casually brought into a meeting taking place at Castille, at which I happened to be present.

Their personal relationship went from bad to worse. Surprisingly, no better relationship developed when Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici became premier after Dom Mintoff resigned. Dr Mifsud Bonnici and Opposition leader Dr Fenech Adami were contemporaries and had been close friends in their younger days.

As political opponents their relationship was barren of any sign of mutual regard, though it was not pregnant with open animosity, either.

When Alfred became leader of the Labour Party there were indications of a possible sea change. Dr Sant is 14 years younger than Prime Minister Fenech Adami. He was then 44 to the latter's 58.

There was a contrast but the beginning was not from poles apart. There was a ginger regard, though not warmth. It was accompanied by a thaw in the political situation.

It did not last for long. Hard PN strategists began demonising Dr Sant. He countered with an eye-for-an-eye exacted without break, in punch-to-counter-punch with his nemesis.

Some elements within the Labour Party took a leaf out of the PN's book to contrast Alfred Sant's relative youthfulness in Dr Fenech Adami's context.

Total negativism when Dr Sant became prime minister and fresh demonising when he was thrown back into Opposition aggravated matters. Profound personal antipathy between the two leaders continues to the end, even as Dr Fenech Adami rides out of politics. Sadly, if he is pressed into accepting the presidency, despite his publicly declared reluctance, that saga could well drag on.

There need not and should not be an automatic dark opening to the Lawrence Gonzi era. His relationship with the Labour Opposition in his eight years as Speaker was totally correct and friendly enough. Had he not decided to re-enter politics in 1996, Labour would have been happy to reappoint him as Speaker.

He did contest the 1996 election, successfully. His period in Opposition saw Dr Gonzi changing. The process was inevitable, yet the mutation was not ugly. As a minister too since 1998, he has been duly political but, I would say as an outside observer, not harshly so.

Now he will be prime minister. The first moves on Thursday saw the Labour Opposition extend a courtesy welcome. It remains to be seen whether that will translate into considering him as a worthy opponent, with whom they will not fail to cross political swords, but towards whom they will not throw bricks unless he does so at them.

In a proactive regard, and after the initial smiles, the ball remains in Dr Gonzi's court for the early stages. It is not customary for politicians to turn the other cheek, whatever their personal inclinations and credentials may be. He will be expected to be tough, trading blow for blow with Dr Sant.

In democratic political terms that too is inevitable. The way he does it, though, could set a test to the promise he made in his acceptance speech on Wednesday of a new approach. He starts off with the clear disadvantage of being expected by many of those who elected him PN leader to be very much like his predecessor. His style, as a minimum, need not be that. He is himself and should be nobody's double, whatever merits Dr Gonzi's sees his mentor possessed. The circumstances are also different.

Inheriting his mantle as leader at a time when it also makes him PM, Lawrence Gonzi has the task of building a new base for his party from which to fight the next general election. According to chance and political cycles, he runs a considerable risk of losing that, as well as the one after it.

Even so, he also has the opportunity to be a less partisan prime minister than Malta tends to be used to, starting with a return to the approach before leaders began to seem to detest each other.

It takes two to tango, certainly. Still, a good dance starts with one taking the lead. Once the initial smiles are over and the new prime minister could do much worse than to act like the old Lawrence Gonzi who was steadfast to his political conviction but also to his good nature. That could actually help him in political terms, for sensible people eventually do realise that good nature and civil style are strengths, not weaknesses.

It would help the national interest, so often mentioned but so frequently ignored. Malta needs a new era of politics of strong democratic contrast, with the protagonists giving no political quarter to each other, yet competing with their excellence, not with any bare-knuckle prowess to pulverise their opponents.

It can and should start now, in earnest, not merely as a matter of form on births, illness and death.

It would enhance the standing of both Lawrence Gonzi as well as Alfred Sant if it did.