Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1519725
2 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 28 APRIL 2024 EWROPEJ JAMES DEBONO jdebono@mediatoday.com.mt Inside the 'third party' side-show: NOMINATIONS for candidates contesting the 2024 MEP elec- tions in June will close tomor- row but the third-party field is already overcrowded, a sign of the now-established eagerness by upstarts and disgruntled exiles to exploit growing disillusion with the two main parties. Maltese politics has been dom- inated by the Labour-Nationalist mainstream for all its post-Inde- pendence history, and then not only electorally but through the various social spaces and influence they occupy in private spheres of action or the civil service. The ad- vent of European elections in 2004 has since allowed the fostering of a wider phalanx of third-party and independent candidates or sin- gle-issue campaigners hoping to make a splash in an election where no government is at stake. On election day in June howev- er, voters will be faced with a very long ballot sheet full of names they hardly know, making it even hard- er for potential third-party voters to separate the wheat from the chaff. Surely enough, the overload of third-party candidates is a sign that many of them are interepret- ing their political traction inside their digital echo chambers, as the prospect of real success among the wider electorate. But in the real world of voting, there is no social media algorithm guiding political choices. The risk is hav- ing a bizarre side-show of political chancers who will ultimately turn off middle-of-the-road voters and give a bad name to third-party politics in general. The far-right circus Banking on local migration wor- ries and probably emboldened by a right-wing drift in Europe- an and global politics, the 2024 election is surely attracting a record number of conservative and far-right candidates. The inability for this rag-tag ensemble of Christian conserv- atives, law-and-order nativists, and Nazi sympathisers to coa- lesce behind a candidate who might otherwise hide the more distatesful aspects of right-wing politics, speaks volumes on the personal vanities that thankfully foil any realistic chance of elec- tion. The Maltese right-wing is broadly split into at least three camps: conservatives who are defined by traditional or reli- gious values, the radical una- shamedly 'racialist' far-right, and Trump-inspired alt-rightists who toy with conspiracy theo- ries on 'the new world order'. The more mainstream con- servative camp, which at Euro- pean level would fall in the EP's European Conservatives and Re- formists (ECR) grouping – which includes parties like Spain's far-right Vox and Giorgia Mel- oni's Brothers of Italy – is best represented by Edwin Vassallo. The former Nationalist MP is best remembered as the only to vote against marriage equality in 2017 and is now projecting him- self as the standard-bearer of this Maltese exceptionalism on abortion in the face of an incon- sequential resolution recently passed by MEPs calling on Malta to decriminalise the termination of pregnancies. Whether Vassallo can carry with him similar constituents who might have voted for him as a Nationalist MP, is question- able, given that so many other formations are also hosting sim- ilar 'exiles', like Partit Popolari. Competing for the conserv- ative vote will be Ivan Grech Mintoff, whose Abba party op- poses civil liberties and is closely linked to right-wing evangelical Christians like Gordon Man- ché. Grech Mintoff – the clue is in the surname – also tries to appeal to an old Labour vote by stamping his feet in defence of Maltese constitutional neutral- ity, a stance recently burnished by a pathetic, limp-wristed stunt where he hurled eggs directly at the floor by the side of Prime Minister Robert Abela at the Freedom Monument. The com- ical moment might yet be his en- during legacy. Another novelty for the right- wing field is the history lecturer Simon Mercieca, whose blog to- day hosts the Trump-inspired, alt-right of Maltese politics: tradi- tionalists Catholics have a home here, together with pro-Putin commentaries, anti-vax conspir- acy theories, as well as bizarre claims on the assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia. Mer- cieca revels in this ecosystem of dropouts from the mainstream, choosing the disgraced former EU commissioner and PN min- ister John Dalli to sign his MEP candidature. While symptomatic of Dalli's descent to the political netherworld, it does point to how far-right vultures fancy feasting Maltese voters will probably be faced with the longest ballot sheet in Maltese electoral history in the forthcoming MEP elections. Is Malta becoming more pluralistic or are small parties increasingly prone to splits, divisions and personal vanities?