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16 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 1 DECEMBER 2019 INTERVIEW Would you agree that Malta is going through a seminal historical moment right now? Yes. It's a time of reckoning. We have had a unique politi- cal situation now for two and a half years: since the last elec- tion, maybe longer. In electoral terms we have one of the most popular governments on re- cord, yet one that has sustained unremitting attacks from di- verse quarters, both local and foreign. Things are coming to a head, and hypotheses mak- ing way for evidence, hopefully, though until now we're only seeing the tip of the iceberg. I won't venture a look into the future, but yes, this is bound to be ground breaking, though I can't guess in what way. Hope- fully we're getting closer to a re- ally new way of doing politics. Yet Malta has often experienced political crises in the past. Is today's situation different from the crises of yesteryear… and if so, how? I don't think there was ever a situation like this before. Past political crises involved party splits (the Mintoff-Boffa clash of 1949), political-religious conflicts (the imposition of spiritual penalties on Constitu- tional and Labour voters in the 1930s and the 1960s), conflicts with Britain (which under- pinned the crises of the 1930s, 1950s and 1960s), electoral ab- errations (1981-87), and inter- nal party discord (2008-2013). There is no precedent to a situation where a government party enjoying an unequalled popularity finds itself under siege due to investigations in- volving corruption and an as- sassination that would seem to be interconnected. Nor is there a precedent for so many resig- nations at once. Ironically, the current crisis has been brought about, at least in part, by the very architects of the party's success. Prime Minister Muscat's intention to resign raises additional questions about whether the 2017 mandate is still valid, with Labour under new leadership. Do you think there is a need for a renewed mandate by general election? Labour's mandate is not tied to Muscat. Labour has a hand- some parliamentary majority as long as it remains united. I'll wager that the question that exercised Muscat's mind was whether party unity was com- ing under threat if he stayed on. In the end it's numbers that count. The ongoing criminal investigation confirms the existence of a deeply entrenched relationship between politics and big business. To what extent, historically, has this relationship underpinned Maltese politics… and do you see it changing as a result of this week's developments? I'm not sure we needed the ongoing investigation to tell us that there's an entrenched relationship between politics and big business. Earlier, dur- ing Mintoff's time, the business class was kept on a tight leash, because the state took a leading role in the economy. For this there has been unrelenting crit- icism. The government then only supported those business- es that went into manufacture for export or in some way sup- ported the country's balance of payments. Ever since socialism – as a practised ideology and elect- able programme – went out of fashion after the 1980s, the Labour Party, like the National- ists, came to believe in the cen- trality of the business class to economic prosperity. This neo-liberal approach, which has formed part of a universal trend since Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan and gained momentum with the fall of communism, pre- sumes that business people are the essential engine of the economy (which is a big discus- sion unto itself, of course). It would be short sighted to sug- gest that this is a phenomenon of recent years. I don't remember a time, for example, when someone wanting to build a hotel didn't expect the government to do- nate premium public land for free. And then we graduated to a point where if you wanted to build a hotel you not only got premium public land but a permit to build on it scores of luxury apartments to boot. The thing is, we're locked into that economic model, and I don't hear anyone saying we should change it. That said, we do need responsible and cred- ible regulation, and in particu- lar to look at the economy and society as one whole organism. Any part of that organism that grows at the expense of the whole should be restrained, which is, for example, what the environmentalist argument is The events of the past week have plunged Malta into a deep crisis. But how unprecedented is the current situation? Historian and dean of the Faculty of Arts, Prof. DOMINIC FENECH argues that while today's crisis is unlike any other before it, it may yet redefine the Maltese political landscape in unforeseeable ways A time of reckoning Raphael Vassallo rvassallo@mediatoday.com.mt