When Joseph Muscat became Labour leader, he set about reuniting a party that had for many years been hobbled by internecine strife. He did the job well, and the result is an uberparty that has no choice but to be elected by landslide majorities.
The problem is that Muscat ended up producing more unity than the party, or the country, could consume. Last week’s events are the result of that chronic indigestion.
Muscat never actually solved the ideological side of the Alfred Sant problem. He figured, probably wisely, that it was something Labour would have to live with. Instead, he built bridges between and earthworks around the party’s many and divergent interests. All good leaders do that – up to a point.
I think it was David Bowie who, when asked about his love life at the height of his rock deity days, quipped that it was rarely just three in bed. That, essentially, is Muscat’s Labour: a dégustation of fourth-floor business tycoons, periti-avukati (architects-lawyers), old-school socialists, soldiers of fortune, switchers and pure and simple laburisti, some of them sal-mewt (unto death). All safely installed behind 35,000+ cubic tonnes of dammed earth, and quite unassailable.
‘Partit magħqud’ (a united party) is a verbal tic of stories of political success. The Labour Party is united, the Nationalist Party is not, therefore Labour prevails, it goes. The formula may well be accurate. Whether or not it is for the better is another matter. At present, the thing that Labour – and, by inference, the country – need most is some disunity. Some less Muscat, in other words.
The other day I came across the February 1913 issue of Manwel Dimech’s one-man show, Il-Bandiera tal-Maltin. Dimech had astonishing backbone. Issue after issue, he urged his readers to resist the British and the Catholic Church as an institution (though not the message of Christianity). This at a time when Empire was at its peak, and when the British and the Catholic Church represented a tremendous power tandem in Malta. Not surprisingly, Dimech paid with his life.
The only hope now is people within the party realise that they do not deserve this
Throughout the years, and not unfairly, Labour has anointed itself Dimech’s spiritual successor. Except it now appears to have forgotten that Dimech’s enemies, too, had offspring. Yorgen Fenech, Keith Schembri and Konrad Mizzi, among others, are the spiritual successors of the excesses of the British Empire and the Catholic Church. They are the reason why the Labour Party was set up in the first place.
Muscat’s strategy throughout the Panama story has been to tap into the unity capital and get his party to close ranks. And closed ranks the party has, with next to no exception. It’s the reason why the many decent members of cabinet became indecent by omission, why laburisti who do not own offshore accounts defend those who do, and why Mizzi scooped up thousands of first-count votes in 2017.
The standard retort in some circles is that laburisti tend to oblige because they are especially tribal and unthinking and brainwashed since Mintoff. This of course is nonsense. The reason why they have closed ranks is that they perceive the Panama story as an attempt to unseat, by means foul, a legitimate Labour government.
As many laburisti see it, certain factions within the PN have a sense of entitlement that prevents them from even contemplating the prospect of a Labour government that is not deviant and a curse on the country. While the laburisti may be right in this, they’re also missing the point.
The issue here is not whether or not Labour has a right to govern. The results of I’ve-lost-count-how-many elections quickly settle that one. Rather, the real question is whether or not Muscat has the right to foist an unrealistic and untenable unity on his party.
In the name of unity and tight ranks and Tagħna Lkoll and whatnot, Muscat has plonked people of the Fenech, Schembri and Mizzi kind on his party. As I write, Mizzi is still a senior government minister. Schembri is still the head of staff. These two were exposed in the Panama story – which, it is worth remembering, was not a matter of someone telling a journalist about a safe in a kitchen somewhere.
As if that weren’t enough, the Panama story has now got far, far grimmer. If a fraction of what we hear is true, there is an unbroken thread that holds together Panama and the assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia. Even if Schembri or Mizzi were not directly behind it (and I tend to think they weren’t), they were part of a tissue of corruption that was.
My gut feeling is that there was more to the assassination than 17 Black – than money, that is. Panama was hardly the first time a business tycoon was exposed for his lack of virtue. It was the first time that that knowledge led to an elaborate assassination. To me, that suggests that power interests other than that of money were involved. If it was just about money, the yacht would have weathered the storm, as it always had done.
This, then, is the kind of tissue of corruption and death that Muscat has associated his party with, in the name of a false unity. He could have jettisoned Schembri and Mizzi, but he didn’t. Now, it is too late. The only hope now is people within the party realise that they do not deserve this, and undo the bundle for a second. What with names like Dimech, they have the right historical credentials to do so.
As long as the bundle includes the mega-corrupt and their protector, most laburisti do not belong in it.