Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1295200
10 maltatoday | WEDNESDAY • 7 OCTOBER 2020 COMMERCIAL EVER noticed how Maltese prime ministers always seem to expect everyone else to put aside all their political differences – no matter how briefly - and unanimously rally around them in a show of uncondi- tional, patriotic support… but only when it comes to one particular 'na- tional cause' (of their own choice, naturally)? As a rule, the argument usual- ly starts something like: 'If there's [drums rolling] ONE THING that absolutely everyone in this country should agree on, regardless of their own political beliefs… it is: [insert chosen issue here]". Needless to add, the inserted 'chosen issue' will invariably take the form of… yep, you guessed it… 'whichever of his own personal opin- ions the same prime minister in- tends to shovel down our collective throats at that particular moment,' of course. (Why, what were you ex- pecting? 'World peace'?) So in Lawrence Gonzi's day, for in- stance, the 'ONE THING' we were all called upon to unanimously agree with was… 'the protection of the un- born'. Hence the ill-fated 2005 cam- paign to entrench Malta's abortion ban into the Constitution, and all the rest of it. Conversely, in Joseph Muscat's era it was support for his own 'progres- sive agenda': and in particular, its emphasis on 'equality', with specific reference to LGBTiQ rights. Never mind that, in this particu- lar case, there were all along certain underlying contradictions (I seem to remember the same Muscat ar- guing against 'full marriage equality for gays', just a few years earlier…); what both those scenarios have in common – apart, of course, from the sheer audacity of prime minis- ters who presume to dictate public opinion on a national level - is also an ulterior (and, in both cases, rath- er thinly-disguised) political mo- tive. By re-inventing himself as a cham- pion of gay rights, for instance, Jo- seph Muscat tried (and very clearly succeeded) to exploit the Nationalist Party's widely-known internal di- visions on such matters: with dev- astating consequences that can still be felt to this day (as attested, inter alia, by the controversies surround- ing the Equality Act, currently being discussed in parliament.) As for the 2005 'entrenchment' proposal: without even question- ing Gonzi's own personal convic- tions, it was all along rather obvi- ously part of a wider (and ongoing) strategy to weaponise the country's overwhelming pro-life majority for political gain: in this case, by forcing the PN's opponents – including La- bour, naturally, but also AD – into the tight corner of having to justify positions that could easily have been interpreted as 'pro-choice' (with all the electoral fall-out that implies). In any case: I could go on, for there is no shortage of other historical ex- amples... but I don't really have to, because Robert Abela has just pro- vided what can only be described as text-book case... if not a blueprint for the entire workings of this particular ploy. In an interview with (as usual) One TV this week, he 'challenged' newly-elected Opposition leader Bernard Grech – and also the rest of the country – to, um, 'put aside their differences, and rally around him in a show of unconditional, patriotic support'. This time, the chosen issue hap- pens to be 'immigration' – you know, that impossibly contentious and hopelessly divisive national problem of ours, on which no two individuals (still less the entire country) are like- ly to ever agree – and even then, just one aspect of Robert Abela's own personal (and entirely subjective) opinion on that particular topic. In his own words: "I appeal to Ber- nard Grech to declare whether he will agree to a common position on immigration. There has to be one, clear message; and that message has to be, 'Malta is full-up'. And if we aren't sending out this message, then we have failed. The country is full up and cannot stand any more pressure from migration…" Already you can see that the gener- al approach is more or less identical - in true Highlander fashion, today's prime minister also believes 'there can only be one' national policy on immigration: i.e., his own – and, un- surprisingly, so are the inherent log- ical fallacies. For starters: it is to say the least de- batable whether the premise of Abe- la's entire argument – i.e, that 'Malta is full-up' - is even true to begin with (still less, whether we should all sim- ply accept it without question, as he evidently expects). Ok, I'll keep this part brief, as these are all arguments that have been made before (including in other sections of this newspaper), but… if Malta is so very 'full-up' that – ac- cording to Abela, anyway - we don't even have any space left for the grand total of 38 asylum-seekers brought in last Monday… why is Abela's own government also estimating that we need to attract 13,000 more foreign workers by the end of the year, just to keep the Maltese economy afloat? And by the same token: why is so much of our current economic model based so exclusively on a con- struction boom aimed at creating residential units – with the PA ap- proving a staggering 50,000 permits between 2013 and 2018, and over 12,000 just last year alone – if not to cater for an exponential population growth that was caused directly by (irony of ironies) the Maltese gov- ernment's own immigration poli- cies…? But like I said, that is how the de- bate is unfolding elsewhere. So for the rest of this article, I'll focus on the 'ulterior political motive' instead. At a glance, it seems that Abe- la learnt a trick or two from both Gonzi and Muscat. Like abortion, immigration is one of those issues that instantly provokes heated (if not downright violent) emotional responses… and this in turn makes it a demonstrably hot potato for any party (let alone one as already vis- cerally divided as the PN) to actually handle. Like Muscat before him, then, Ab- ela is trying to force Bernard Grech into taking up a position that – one way or the other – will not go down too well with sizeable chunks of his own party's supporters. (And fair enough, I suppose: after all, Opposi- tion leaders are expected to come up with their own policy visions: with or without any prodding from the Prime Minister). The problem in this instance, how- ever, is that – like Gonzi in 2005 – Abela is making the mistake of as- suming that his opponents' loss will automatically translate into his own party's gain. And while that may even be true, in certain cases (as it undeniably was for Muscat's 'liberal/progres- sive' makeover)… with immigration in particular, the dynamics on the ground are somewhat different. Just as the issue itself tends, by its own nature, to transgress all the usual political barriers – in the sense that partisan allegiance, in and of itself, doesn't seem to be much of a factor when it comes to forming an opinion about it – the real under- lying political divide no longer has anything to with 'Labour' or the 'PN' at all. In this scenario, a new (well, new- ish) political demographic has to taken into account: the vast, unnum- bered and impossibly diverse multi- tude of people who – regardless of their own political preferences – are now manifestly dissatisfied: both by the immigration situation itself, as well as by the emphatic failure of any recent government's attempts to tackle it (or even make a single jot of practical difference). These people – and they run the full gamut from 'mildly-(and-justifi- ably)-concerned-on-a-purely-logis- tical-level', all the way to 'as-outspo- kenly-racist-as the-Ku-Klux-Klan', with everything in between – are the ones who are likeliest to actually base their voting intentions on this one issue; and just as their past ex- perience under Nationalist govern- ments has taught them to be disillu- sioned by 'loud promises of action' (while nothing ever really changed in practice)… .. well, it is pretty much the same experience that carried on under both Muscat's and Abela's admin- istrations, too. Indeed, it is visible even from Abela's own challenge to Bernard Grech: rooted, as it is, in the premise that Abela himself rep- resents the 'tougher' of the two ap- proaches to immigration. Quite frankly, this is every bit as questionable as his other observation about Malta being 'full-up'. What we have witnessed over the last 12 months, time and again, can in fact be described as the clean opposite. It was more a case of 'one Robert Ab- ela capitulation after another'… with some U-turns only marginally more embarrassing than others. This is, after all, the same Robert Abela whose idea of a 'tough' stance was to hold migrants as hostages on Captain Morgan ferries for weeks on end… until, in the space of a couple of hours, the hostages managed to overpower the crew, hijack all three vessels, and negotiate the terms of Abela's surrender over the radio… And on two separate occasions after that, Abela's government like- wise had to concede defeat after extended stand-offs involving mi- grants rescued at sea… eventually accepting to disembark the stranded passengers in Malta, after weeks of stamping their feet in defiance… Just as all this was perfectly visible to you, me and everyone else (in- cluding, it must be said, the inter- national press)… so too will it have been visible to that all-important demographic I fleetingly described above. And they are likely to be every bit as impressed by Abela's 'tough talk' on immigration, as they are by Bernard Grech's evident pussy-foot- ing on the same issue. This is, in fact, the problem in a nutshell: by 'challenging' Grech to commit to a 'common position on immigration' – when we can all see, with our own two eyes, has govern- ment's immigration policies have been an outright, abject failure… what has Abela actually convinced those people to believe, if not the sheer futility of ever expecting any real solution from mainstream pol- itics? No, no, make no mistake: Abela's strategy may even work, to a degree, when it comes to further weakening an already destabilised Opposition party… but it will not strengthen his own party in the long run. On the contrary, the only political parties likely to derive any advantage from this tactic, are the three (pos- sibly four) new ones that have been formed over the past couple of years – as well as the established ones like Imperium Europa, which can already claim to represent 10,000 votes at the last MEP election - all patiently waiting the opportunity to finally eat into that massive contin- gent of disillusioned, and politically 'homeless', voters. And, speaking only for myself… that is not something on which there should be any 'national consensus'. There can only be one immigration policy: Robert Abela's Raphael Vassallo