There appears to be a discreet throng of right-leaning individuals across this island that may be, willy-nilly, deciding its fate. I call this legion the silent right.
I am a centrist, constantly trying to reconcile my free spirit with my traditional values. In so doing, I attempt to combine liberal ideals and policies with conservative stances.
This means that someone like myself would have no issue at all seeing LGBTIQ+ rights as a natural extension of the dignity of the human person, since we are all treasured members of this community, but for similar reasons would have an issue with the implementation of abortion. This is not a religious argument. While religion does exercise an influence on politics, the two should be kept distinct from each other.
A friend of mine once told me that the Maltese voter is essentially Labour. What he really meant is that the Maltese voter is more to the left. How can you not be to the left when our welfare state provides such an array of free services? Though he might be right, I still think that the Maltese voter ideology is not categorically leftist. It is conveniently leftist. In fact, it is also pragmatically right-wing. A self-fuelling paradox.
The silent right may not always admit its inclination towards very conservative stances when interviewed in some survey. However, it would express it somehow on election day. The silent right is not symmetrically identical to the ultra-conservatives, the libertarians and the populists who are not so covert anymore. Indeed, they have formed their own political groupings: Imperium Europa, Patrijotti Maltin, Partit Popolari to mention a few. They are, as well, relatively unobtrusive.
In general, as philosopher Roger Scruton puts it, conservatives are less vociferous than the liberal left. The left is great at conveying its message. However, the silent right is strewn across all major political groupings. We also find it in that movement that should be leftist par excellence – the Labour Party. The Nationalist Party mirrors this situation since there are some very enthusiastic liberals within the ranks of this traditionally conservative party.
Furthermore, beguilingly, Labour became its own nemesis. It grew into what previous Labour front runners accused the PN of being. Labour became ‘the establishment’. Labour misplaced the guiding enlightenment of the French revolution. Liberté has become an extreme form of go-as-you-wish Hobbesian state of nature; Égalité was transformed into ‘some are more equal than others’ and Fraternité was understood to mean fraternising with tycoons and/or criminals.
A friend of mine once told me that the Maltese voter is essentially Labour
This sleaze is not right (sewwa) but, abroad, it is definitely more typical of the capitalist right than of the left. The slogan ‘is-sewwa jirbaħ żgur’ (what is right shall certainly prevail) is actually what we all aspire to but it never comes spontaneously. Before is-sewwa prevails, people suffer. Actually, Daphne Caruana Galizia was slain for perpetuating that ideal. Fulfilling that cycle.
As a Hegelian, I am inclined to accept historical cycles and appreciate that synthesis provides a sort of via media, similar to that encouraged by Aristotle. So I see this shift to the right as somehow a natural consequence or reaction to some previous antithetical cycle. My Hegelian side also gives me hope that establishments will change through a cooperative transformation rather than a bloody revolution.
Even though, one must reiterate, blood has been spilled in Malta. And, yet, we saw no dramatic vote swing happening. In spite of everything that has materialised, Labour still enjoys a comfortable lead.
Make no mistake about this! There has been a revolt. A few villains were politically guillotined. That was historically pivotal. Nonetheless, this cycle is not over yet. There is still the legal reverberation that will, eventually, end too. Shortly, those events will teleport us into the synthesis-cycle. This synthesis will then become the new thesis-cycle.
The PN will have a unique opportunity, offered by this cycle, to customise the much-desired political centre – an equilibrium between those low-key and unspoken values of the silent right and the values of the conspicuous and vociferous liberal left.
The question is: do less nostalgia, fresher faces, dialogical ingenuity and greener politics suffice for the PN to win an election?
Let us not forget that the main purpose of politics is not to make people perfect but that of securing the rights shared equally by all and nurturing the virtues that equip citizens for freedom. The rival interests, multiplicity of groups and associations, and competing conceptions of well-being that characterise free societies make adaptation, equilibrium and calibration indispensable for the common good project of cooperation, peace, dignity, freedom and justice to succeed.
In order to build a nation at ease with itself, we urgently need a vibrant, veritable vision!
Alan Xuereb, lawyer linguist, political philosophy author