2024 was a year of significant political change mainly due to the Labour Party’s loss of a seat in the European Parliament at the European elections. The Labour Party has bene gradually losing its support over a series of scandals and an intransigence by its leader and the Prime Minister to absolve himself and the Party from the Devil’s Pact he made with the ex-Premier Joseph Muscat. Prime Minister Robert Abela keeps deluding himself that his electoral challenges are based on policy, but his problem is one of governance and rule of law.
On the other hand, the Nationalist Party keeps failing to make significant headway against a ruling-party that is regularly mired in scandals. This issue has been discussed at length on this website. The Nationalist Party is failing to make headway with the youth due to its conservative character not to mention its involvement in the construction industry’s rent-seeking regime. The Nationalist Party has been supportive of major construction projects that have been opposed by residents and NGOs alike including the Villa Rosa project and the Fort Chambray project. Adding to its challenges, the Nationalist Party keeps failing to reach out and collaborate with civil society to fight the government in one one united movement. Enclosed in its conservative approach, the Nationalist Party keeps projecting itself as a relic of the past that serves as the last resort and the desperate alternative to the Labour government for the sake of normality
In this situation where the main political parties are losing support, the cohort of voters who would like to vote for a third alternative is growing significantly. In the last European Parliament elections, the Labour Party lost its absolute majority with third parties and independent candidates collectively getting up to 14% of the vote. The election reminded us of the 2004 election when Arnold Cassola, back then an AD candidate, got nearly elected. Unfortunately, the green and progressive vote, this time round was spilt between ADPD and Arnold Cassola, making it even more difficult for him to get elected.
The third-party vote will now be further fragmented with the formation of a new party, Partit Malti Progressiv which is currently being lead by Cyrus Engerer and Sylvan Agius. Cyrus Engerer was a previous Labour MEP and Sylvan Agius worked at Helena Dalli’s secretariat, and both of them share social-democratic and liberal values. They will be challenging Labour by taking from its progressive voting base and undecided youths, but they will be competing with Arnold Cassola for the same voting-cohort, while Arnold Cassola is competing with Sandra Gauci of ADPD. This excessive and pseudo political diversity doesn’t make any sense, and if anyone is not trying to solve it, the Labour Party will benefit from this further fragmentation of the political positions.
People who are doing politics should ask themselves serious questions about their aims, and future prospects of getting elected and even taking power. Politics and running a government are very boring and intensive activities for the principled ones that actually trying to do something good out of it. Those entering the political fray should ask themselves, is this really what I want for myself?ย For those who are more self-interested, politics becomes a joyride that eventually leads to potential disgrace and public resentment for their corrupt actions.
If taking power by forming a cohesive political block in parliament is the aim of all the independent and third-party candidates, surely, they must be engaged together in coalition talks to form one single party list at the ballot. Arnold Cassola would by default have to lead this coalition given that he is in the forefront in the tally of votes as the main independent and third-party candidate. The problem is that this is not happening and they are all to blame: big egos and vanity and these characteristics are hurting their prospects for any meaningful political change.
The worse case scenario for the Labour Party is to face a cohesive and united centrist and progressive party that, unlike the PN, is untainted with a past history of scandals. This political party would inevitably disrupt politics by prompting the Nationalist Party to change in addition to weakening the Labour Party even further. This should be the most pragmatic and cohesive objective of a third-party in order to build an actual alternative government to the two main political parties. Anything less than that would mean that the third-party political movement would remain restricted in the realm of activism and not that of governance.
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