In a mere seven months, Robert Abela has gone from presenting himself as the candidate of continuity to that of change – attracting tumultous applause from his party conference both times. From the first sentence of his speech a week ago, his running theme was that Labour had to be the party and government of change. There’s more to see here than the ability to turn on a sixpence.
The media reports on the conference were transfixed by Abela’s guarantee that Malta will not be grey listed by Moneyval, the European branch of the Financial Action Task Force (grey listing would significantly damage the economy and indict the Labour government). Prime ministers, however, have ways of knowing where the wind is blowing. We should assume Abela has been given indications that the bullet will merely whistle past his ear.
The speech showcased a political ability that Abela’s critics underestimate. Remember context. One of the conference’s tasks was to approve a rule change that reversed one of Joseph Muscat’s key decisions as party leader. In 2016, Muscat made it possible for a sitting MP to become deputy leader for party affairs – a ploy to promote Konrad Mizzi. This conference voted to revert to the old rule: no MPs.
The position of deputy leader was vacant because Chris Cardona had just been forced out. Cardona himself had replaced Mizzi, himself expelled from Labour’s parliamentary group less than a month ago.
These were events that had divided the Labour base. Some resented any show of giving an inch to political critics. They criticised it as weakness that Muscat had never showed.
But the conference was an elaborate performance to distance Abela from Muscat. First, there was the change of place – from the Labour headquarters in Ħamrun to the Rialto in Cospicua.
For the older delegates, the Rialto evokes powerful, emotional associations with Labour victories – the Dom Mintoff period, rather before the Muscat and Alfred Sant periods. In case anyone had missed the significance, the delegates were told, more than once, that Cospicua was Labour’s home.
Robert Abela is staffing the party with politicians so new that there’s no past to catch up with them
By choosing a place with little association with Muscat, Abela displaced him. By changing the deputy leadership rule, Abela ensured that the next deputy leader will owe his career to him. He will not be someone associated with the Muscat period, as most MPs would be.
Within half a year, while tackling a pandemic and economic crisis, Abela is refashioning Labour in his image. With the exception of Chris Fearne, the most senior posts in government are largely occupied by people he has rapidly promoted, his age or even younger.
The next deputy leader, Daniel Micallef, fits this pattern. The conference was convened because two deputy leaders had been kicked out, but Abela changed it into one that celebrated new positions for youth and women.
Meanwhile, when the Nationalist Party debates change, the media images are of middle-aged, paunchy, grim-faced men looking for a way to get rid of another 50-year-old paunchy man.
Back to the conference. Abela’s critics usually focus on his press interviews. They see there a slightly histrionic politician whose answers seem over-rehearsed, artificially upbeat, and not quite in sync with the interviewer’s questions; a bit like a badly dubbed film. But his conference speeches show a different calibre of speaker.
He knows how to read the room. He can set its mood. He has shown a surefootedness in knowing when he needs to mirror the mood, when he needs to lead it, and how to deftly move from one to the other.
He didn’t just ditch “continuity”. He retained Muscat’s theme of Labour as the “party of wealth”. He redefined continuity by evoking Mintoff. He made “change” palatable by associating it with Labour’s strength. He assured the base that the wagons would still be drawn around any minister under “senseless” attack.
Of course, chutzpah helps. Abela defined Labour as the party that never attacks individuals – when Labour has the best organised online army, its colonels on the public payroll, and which routinely mobs, doxes and intimidates its critics.
Will “change” eventually cover this, too? Don’t hold your breath. Ironically, the more of his MPs that are engulfed in scandal, the more Abela will need Labour’s media to serve as attack dogs. Anything less would seem like the weakness he is at pains to disavow.
And he does have MPs he needs to be concerned about. Joe Mizzi, no longer minister but still an MP, may yet be impaled for his role in the Streamcast scandal.
Last week, Edward Zammit Lewis and Rosianne Cutajar hogged the headlines, entangled in Yorgen Fenech’s web. We have yet to see if other names emerge in court, once evidence from Fenech’s phone(s) and computers, seized by the police, begins to be presented.
The court cases, the public inquiry, the magisterial inquiries, Moneyval, the attention of major news organisations with an impact on Malta’s reputation and economy: all these are long fuses, lit under his predecessor. Perhaps they will fizzle out. But they’re not something Abela can control.
What he can do is attempt to mitigate any impact. He is staffing the party with politicians so new that there’s no past to catch up with them; they have the best chance of surviving any major scandal that might rock the party. And he tells the faithful to see strength in change.
It’s a strategy born of weakness. But it’s long-sighted. It’s based on an unflinching look at one’s vulnerabilities. It’s a mile ahead of most critics.