Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1363129
10 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 18 APRIL 2021 OPINION Raphael Vassallo Same old strategy, same old results… TELL you what: let's try a little experiment. I'll list out a number of events that took place at a cer- tain (recent) time in this coun- try's history… and you try and guess when they all occurred. Ready? Here goes… 1) There is a major develop- ment in the Daphne Caruana Galizia murder trial – involving at least one high-profile arrest – which sends the entire coun- try into convulsions. The media portrays the situation as a 'crisis', and the Prime Minister faces re- newed calls to resign (and/or apologise), etc., etc. 2) The European Parliament convenes for an urgent debate about 'the situation in Malta, in the light of recent revelations concerning the murder of Daph- ne Caruana Galizia'. Despite resistance by Labour's MEP delegation, the discussion goes ahead as planned (and results in the umpteenth, almost-unani- mous EP condemnation of Mal- ta's rule-of-law situation). 3) Soon after all this has taken place, two separate newspapers publish their regular political surveys: and it transpires that (as usual) none of the above has made so much as the tiniest dent in the general thrust of public opinion. As MaltaToday put it at the time: "The survey suggests that despite the political crisis that has rocked the Labour govern- ment, people are still not seeing a viable alternative. The results […] put the PL on the same mar- gin of victory it obtained in the 2017 general election…" 4) For some bizarre reason, everyone seems 'surprised' that (to quote from the same arti- cle) the "Opposition has failed to capitalise on the widespread anger and turmoil caused by the damning revelations…" And… OK, I'll stop there for now: because I think I've already given you more than enough to go on. Or at least, enough for you to work out that… no, ac- tually: the above is NOT a de- scription of events of the past couple of weeks (and if there is any similarity at all with today's situation… it's mainly because I was very selective in my choice of which details to include, and which to leave out). For instance: if I specified that the 'crisis', alluded to in para- graph one, actually resulted in the Prime Minister's resignation by the end of the month… well, it would have been altogether too obvious that I was referring to the events of late November/ December 2019, not today (and let's face it: where's the fun in that?) But in any case: you have the answer now. Those occurrences I (very loosely) described above, roughly correspond to what hap- pened here around a year and a half ago. And yes, there are a few differences between the two sce- narios. I've already mentioned that the 2019 'crisis' was real enough bring down Joseph Mus- cat altogether (a possibility that had always previously seemed 'remote', to say the least)… … and it bears mentioning that November 2019 arrest of Yorgen Fenech – i.e., the 'damning rev- elation' that sparked the whole crisis off to begin with – was far more impactful, in the short term, than the arrest of Keith Schembri last month (on charg- es that are, in any case, unrelated to the murder of Daphne Carua- na Galizia). And there are other differenc- es, too: not least, the way the Nationalist Party eventually re- sponded to those negative De- cember 2019 survey results… and all the others that followed. As I recall, the PN did not mere- ly talk about the 'need to take tough decisions' (as Bernard Grech is doing today). On the contrary: it went on to actually take the most drastic of 'tough decisions' imaginable: by giving its former leader Adrian Delia the boot, no less… precisely be- cause of his failure to 'make any difference in the polls'. But let's not get lost in super- ficial details. Having sifted out all those differences… I think we can safely agree that the gener- al pattern of events (if not the events themselves) remains un- cannily similar. Yet again, we've just had anoth- er supposed political 'crisis' (also caused by 'damning revelations' concerning the former Muscat administration; and also com- plete with yet another European Parliamentary discussion, chug- ging away merrily in the back- ground)… all leading to precise- ly the same sort of anti-climactic denouement: once again, with the same old newspaper surveys, pointing towards the same old, unchanging result… In other words, there is once again a clear mismatch between certain events, and the expecta- tions they clearly raised among certain people… and the non-ef- fect those same events clearly had on people's overall voting intentions. And, much more significant- ly: all this time later – after a change of leadership in both government and opposition par- ties, please note – the situation remains broadly the same in one, critical respect. Truth be told, there has been no significant change in elector- al patterns, of any kind whatso- ever, since 2013 at the earliest. And unless you count minor fluctuations in the sheer extent of Labour's majority – never amounting to more than a few thousand votes, at most, here and there – there never seems to be any correlation at all, between all the public outrage (both local and international) that is rou- tinely expressed over any given political 'scandal'… and the po- litical state of play itself. And when you consider how much else has changed in the meantime - how much more, for instance, we know today about the misdeeds of the for- mer Muscat administration; and how much our internation- al reputation has suffered in the meantime, as a result of all those EU condemnations, and all the bad press in general – well, I think it's high time we finally ask ourselves a teenie-weenie little question. Why do these so-called 'earth- quakes' always seem to have virtually no impact at all on the actual political landscape? Why is it, exactly, that everything that seems (on the surface) to be an indictment on the party in gov- ernment – or a least, a vindica- tion of its critics - always ends up having almost the clean opposite effect instead? It is to answer this question, incidentally, that I prefer to fo- cus on the similarities between today and 2019… rather than the differences. For let's face it: those polls results are not the only things that have remained exactly the same ever since. Despite a change in leadership between now and then – and above all, despite repeated mes- sages, from the electorate, that the Nationalist Party's entire