Disfigured politics

It's going to be a long, hot political summer and the heat will intensify over the following three seasons. The parties haven't really stopped electioneering since the 2003 general election. Well before that, in fact, the political scene had become an ongoing electoral campaign.

The infusion of yearly local elections gave a few more turns to the screw. At this point in time, we are at the formal start of the electoral campaign that will lead to the next general election. That was recently announced in suggestive terms at the meeting of the Nationalist Party ruling body.

It is interesting and telling that the not-so-subtle merging of state and party matters has not exercised much analytical attention, much less raised any outcry, like there used to be during Labour governments, particularly under the leadership of Mr Dom Mintoff. At the time the distinction between state and party was also considerably blurred.

Yet there was no party general secretary who assumed such weight in state matters and became such an obvious influence on the PM, as Joe Saliba, the PN general secretary, has done over Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi.

That did not have to be revealed by John Dalli, the long-serving Nationalist Finance Minister who, after a brief stint as Foreign Minister, was effectively forced to walk the plank by Dr Gonzi, the man who had defeated him in the contest for the leadership of the PN. The PM may have thought he had his reasons, but has not revealed them, notwithstanding Mr Dalli's persistent challenge to him to do so.

In his column in this newspaper on Sunday, Mr Dalli effectively declared open conflict. His declaratory heading - No more metaphors - was duly backed up with succinct stating and naming in the text. Dr Gonzi's name was not misplaced once, or absent where it mattered. Nor could there be any doubt about the verbal gunpowder and shot fired at him.

That will form a prominent sub-plot in the run-up to the general election. Given the party machine that will be (once again?) mobilised against him, Mr Dalli is likely to come out worse off. But there will be a few bruises showing on Dr Gonzi and the PN. As well as on the general secretary.

The bruises on the latter and on his party will add to those he himself makes on both. The electoral campaign of the party in government is usually announced and power-housed by the prime minister.

Mr Saliba does not go along with such niceties. He took it on himself to set the tone of the campaign. It will be personal. It will be vicious. That was made evident by a snide reference to "face lifting", which was immediately recognised as a personal barb at Opposition leader Alfred Sant.

Apparently, Dr Sant had to undertake with urgency an eyelid operation (Norman Hamilton, commenting in his 'My Agenda' column in The Times on Thursday). That was interpreted as "cosmetic surgery" and used as a metaphor for his party in an underhand dig at the leader of the Opposition.

Such is some of the stuff of Maltese politics.

The MLP, using the kind of tactics honed by the PN when in Opposition, does not pull punches in its direct attacks on Nationalist ministers. That is currently evident in the way Minister Censu Galea has been persistently targeted in recent weeks on the basis of taped outbursts by him several years ago against the unacceptable way the Transport Authority was operating at the time. The outburst does not remotely suggest Mr Galea had unclean hands. Nevertheless, he is personally bludgeoned with the coldly scripted charge that he did not stop the rot, which led him to burst out.

That type of offensive on the person, as on those of us who were at a similar receiving through time, stresses and tells on the targeted individual. Like offensives that needlessly drag in a politician's family, the tactic is not at all an encouraging feature of the Maltese way of doing politics. At least, it is not personal in the sense that one is attacked for the way he looks.

That is how the PN general secretary's use of the "face-lifting" metaphor came across. A mistake? One does not risk making mistakes over such matters.

One wonders how many more such 'mistakes' will be committed as the prematurely declared electoral campaign unfolds. One does not have to wonder at all what that will do to the practice of politics itself. It will make it look dirtier and dirtier.

The other day I was interviewed by Charles Xuereb for a new series he is starting on the Campus FM radio station. Very interestingly, his running theme is to explore contrariness. He based himself on my recently published collection of memoirs to challenge me in his inoffensive but incisive style on the popular conception - even more than a perception - that politics is dirty.

I reply by arguing, as I do in my book, that it is not politics that is dirty - there are some politicians who dirty it by dirtying themselves, as well as others who dirty it by the way they try to dirty opponents.

I reached that conclusion during my years as a practising politician. I have strengthened it in over the nine years I have been out of the game, but continuing to observe and comment about it from a detached vantage point.

Some politicians, whether MPs or party people, do their utmost to feed the conception of those who say that politics and politicians are dirty, and to create and fan a perception among others that it is indeed so. They do so for party gain, and some for personal gain as well. In both cases it is a self-serving exercise. It does no real good to the party, far less to democracy.

Democracy needs eternal vigilance. It needs people prepared to point out possibilities of corruption. It needs suspicious actions to be thoroughly investigated. And the polluter should definitely pay.

There should be no legal time-barring on illegal misdeeds by politicians, past or present. And there should be a Whistle Blower Act to encourage and protect those who can come forward with information that flushes out political misdeeds and corruption.

That, by the way, is not a new proposal by Dr Frank Portelli, the former MP and PN president who is alleging corruption in the Mater Dei hospital context. Labour MP Evarist Bartolo has been making that proposal since the early Nineties. Whoever came up with it, or is now backing it, it is more than time to introduce proper Whistle Blower legislation.

While that would make it somewhat more possible for political misdeeds to be brought to light, it would not make it any less important for politicians to behave properly, to be honest in their own regard, as well as ethical in regard to opponents, on the other side of the political divide, or in their own party.

Politicians should also be much more prepared to recognise and own up when they make a mistake. Joe Saliba made one such mistake in regard to Dr Sant. Letting it run puts him, his leader and his party in a bad light.

Were it the case that a politician decided to undergo surgery to improve his appearance, that should hardly be material to snipe at him with. Politicians, especially nowadays because of the vision media, are as image-conscious as can be.

They have their own team to keep them spruced up and presenting a 'good face' at all times. The stress on sartorial politics, the way politicians dress, is sometimes taken to amusing extremes. Image also has to do with physical exercise.

There is nothing wrong in any of that. It would be very wrong, though, to mistake image for substance. However a politician looks, whatever the projected image, it is the substance or lack of it in his position that counts. It is the way a politician thinks, the ideas he comes up with, and the way he argues his case that tells in the end.

Politics is not about modelling. A politician should be suitably dressed. But s/he is not a model. Even David Beckham recognises that, as a footballer, he stands and falls by what he does on the field. That earns or loses him his professional reputation, not the adverts he poses for or the traipsing he and his wife make in their preferred society.

If the electoral campaign for the next general election has really opened, it got off to a bad start. The campaign should be about issues, not people. Not about the Nationalist or Labour leaders as individuals, but about what they stand for, their ability to look ahead, anticipate, plan and execute.

Their ability to deliver. Their ability to realise when they have erred, and take immediate steps to remedy also comes into it.

Before the electoral campaign proceeds much further, it will be important for politicians to realise that some of them have debilitated and disfigured the art of politics. They owe it to voters to return it to good health.

Only then will they earn the honest right to try to be the people's choice.