In our editorial last Tuesday we suggested that the country needs a new political vision with the power to make transformational changes in society for the general good.
Political visions can either be blurred and vague, making it difficult for ordinary people to buy into them. Or they can be clear and well-defined, able to capture the imagination and attract support.
Inspirational political leaders have a clear vision how to improve the wellbeing of society. To do so they are prepared to broaden the range of ideas they offer beyond mainstream political views. This is how politics becomes transformational.
Malta’s post-war political history is marked by the milestones of transformational politics adopted in turn by both the Labour and Nationalist parties. In the late 1950s and 1960s, Labour sold the vision of independence to a conservative electorate that initially feared to shed the ties of colonialism. The PN then delivered the legal reality of independence and started transforming our military-based economy into a modern one centred on tourism and manufacturing.
The 1970s saw the strengthening of the welfare state by a PL administration with the adoption of social policies that benefitted mainly the working classes.
In the late 1980s, the PN set the course of stabilising the country from its political turmoil and liberalising the economy. It foresaw the benefits of Malta joining the EU to broaden its ambitions and opportunities.
After nearly 25 years of PN administrations, the PL under new leadership sold the idea of the importance of merit, equality of opportunity and good governance to an electorate weary of 25 years of perceived PN arrogance and public mismanagement.
The country is now facing another critical challenge. The adoption of neo-liberal strategies has led to impressive economic growth but created an illusion of prosperity: growth achieved at the cost of immeasurable social and environmental damage and the degradation of good governance mainly aimed at redirecting public wealth into private pockets.
The laissez-faire economic model has widened the gap between the haves and the have-nots through the manipulation of property and land into speculative investment vehicles for the few.
In the next few months, the PL and the PN will present their electoral manifestos. The PL will likely repeat its “business as usual” mantra because most people “have never had it so good”. It will also present itself as the champion of minority rights, except that the minorities are unlikely to include those living in distressed economic and social conditions.
The PN’s vision remains opaque and it runs the risk of failing to give the electorate a clear idea of the alternative it seeks to offer.
Politicians of both parties will project themselves as “moderate” or “centrist”, not realising that centrism is becoming outdated in politics. Centrist policies are based on the premise that there is nothing fundamentally wrong with the current economic structure. Passionless, small-minded politicians prefer to sit on the fence, deeply engrained in outdated socio-economic assumptions.
Those who feel that it is time to adopt transformational politics may still be in the minority. But they are the real progressives in society. Transformational politics is visionary in the way it acts to secure the common good, even if it may be uncomfortable for the few.
In Malta’s electoral system, democratic government can realistically only be as good as the best options that the PL and PN present to the electorate. So far, there is little evidence that either party has the transformational political vision needed by the country at this juncture.