Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1376560
15 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 23 MAY 2021 NEWS of building boundaries can't be blamed for their distrust. Balance in imbalance On this topic the PN is run- ning with the hares and chas- ing with the hounds. It may propose cosmetic reforms but it falls short on a promise to change policies, which contrib- ute to uglification. The most it can promise is to strike a bet- ter balance between business and the environment, a mantra which has already been adopt- ed by Robert Abela's Labour, which is increasingly adopting the discourse of past PN admin- istrations. After the excesses of the Mus- cat administration, which saw public land being handed over to fat cats like Sadeen and the DB Group, Abela can easily pro- ject a more nuanced approach, rendering the PN irrelevant without taking any significant step to reverse the direction. On the other hand the PN needs to win back the develop- ers and property owners who enriched themselves in the past years, while retaining its appeal among its own crowd of Dubai aspirants. For let's not forget that Smart City was Malta's first taste of Dubaification. And neither can those shocked by Charles Polidano's pending tax bill ignore the fact that this was left to accumulate under suc- cessive PN-led administrations. That may explain why the PN does not win any votes on this issue. Disillusioned Labour voters and floaters simply do not trust it, while those seduced by Du- bai and Singapore now opt for Labour. In this way the PN's failure to root its critique of Labour's corruption in populist antago- nism towards the power of big business groups, made it easier for Labour to depict the PN's stance as an elitist response to its widening of the circle of ben- eficiaries beyond the traditional elites. PN: Alien language to the young The PN is equally dumbstruck by the change in people's mores and values unleashed by the di- vorce referendum but acceler- ated by the liberal reforms ush- ered by Joseph Muscat. In the following years we had the enactment of full marriage equality, one of the most pro- gressive gender identity laws in the world and laws permit- ting embryo freezing. Two ex- ceptions remain: reproductive rights for women and citizen- ship and inclusion for migrant worker communities. The reason for this is the histori- cal weakness of the women's movement in Malta and the ac- tive cultivation of xenophobia by Labour itself, particularly against Africans reaching Malta by boat. Yet even on these issues, re- ality is catching up, with the pro-choice movement showing signs of vitality and foreign- ers living here increasingly de- manding a say on what happens around them. The current de- bate on abortion triggered by Marlene Farrugia's bill to de- criminalise liability for women and doctors, would simply not have been possible a decade ago when pro-choice voices were immediately shot down as murderers and marginalised. Ironically two years after Mal- ta joined the EU, it was former PN deputy PM Tonio Borg who tried to stop history, by sup- porting a campaign by Gift of Life to entrench the criminal- isation of women and doctors who commit an abortion, in the constitution. The problem for the PN is simply that it has become it- self a prisoner of the two-party system, which prevents it from being a coherent voice for con- servatives but also from adopt- ing more liberal positions and reinventing itself as a social lib- eral centrist party. Even some of the most rigor- ous critics of Labour's corrup- tion or environmental policies feel closer to Labour when it comes to civil liberties. Ironi- cally, while the party finds itself affirming its commitment to protect life from conception to death, it cannot avoid harbour- ing candidates who hold differ- ent values, as is the case with new candidate Emma Portelli Bonnici. Still, the balancing act between Edwin Vassallo and new more liberal voices is hard to sustain and ultimately the PN speaks a language which is alien to younger people, whose values and aspirations have changed. Surveys have repeatedly shown that support for the PN among voters younger than 35 hovers at around 20%. This ex- plains why Labour is so keen on pushing reforms like cannabis liberalisation and euthanasia, which capture the imagination of strategic groups of voters. Labour's toxic cocktail While it is the PN which faces the brunt of the contradictions unleashed by these two great national transformations, La- bour is not spared from its own contradictions. Labour like the PN is a coali- tion, which is increasingly di- vided both on environmental issues and on the further ex- pansion of civil liberties. More- over liberal reforms have also been tainted by the proximity to big business interests and the ensuing corruption. Rosianne Cutajar's story itself, that of a courageous liberal re- former who unlike many in her party also extended the promise of inclusion to migrant com- munities, sees nothing wrong in consorting with people like Yorgen Fenech, incarnating this contradiction of sorts. Labour's own crop of post-ideological, young, fun-loving ministers who openly flaunt branded at- tire seem to represent a slack- ening of political standards, which makes future debate on Labour's soul even more un- likely. Possibly in the right condi- tions Malta could be fertile ground for a national conserva- tive opposition, which opposes both economic neoliberalism for the dislocation and anomie it brings about in daily life; and social liberalism, which erodes age-old certainties. But if the PN takes this direction it will inevitably reduce itself to a rump, deprived of its strategic liberal wing. In the meantime, while even on abortion Labour can afford to be against without closing the door, it has not lost the support of its own conserva- tive constituencies. What has kept the Maltese working class- es on board was Labour's abil- ity to square the circle: that of advocating policies which have increased inequality while still improving living standards, by lowering bills, introducing free childcare and removing exam fees. While in the short term this has defused anger, Labour's promise not to increase taxation to redistribute wealth makes its social policy dependent on a de- velopment model which further increases inequality and dis- rupts communities. That does not mean that seg- ments of the working class, especially those in precarious employment and who pay rent, are not taking the brunt. But neither has the PN, whose track record on precarious employ- ment was even worse than La- bour's, has much to say to these voters, which also include a large category of foreigners who cannot even vote. But the disarray in the op- position brought about by its positioning on these changes further contributes to the per- ception that Labour is a better manager of its own contradic- tions. In the absence of the un- likely rise of third parties or in- dependents able to articulate a populist alternative to Labour's model of development, the end result of this could well be Ab- ela winning the next election with the same margin despite an increase in non-voters. jdebono@mediatoday.com.mt Over the past decade Malta has been engulfed by breathtaking change on two fronts: a liberalisation of mores and values which restored agency to thousands previously kept invisible; and the brutal unleashing of market forces on a fragile landscape which made communities helpless in the face of force majeure