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That Malta has a deeply-rooted nexus between organised crime, prominent politicians, police officers and big business has now been made amply clear by last Decembers horrific revelations, which led to the disgraceful exit of Joseph Muscat, who has now resigned from parliament without shedding any light on his relationship with his former chief of staff, Keith Schembri. Then COVID-19 came and the anti-corruption drive took a back seat as everyday insecurities and fears took centre-stage.

Change without revolution

Under Robert Abela the country has moved forward on a number of aspects, with all the protagonists of Panamagate and its aftermath having been removed or forced to resign. This includes former police commissioner Lawrence Cutajar, former Attorney General Peter Grech, deputy police commissioner Silvio Valletta, minister and former Labour deputy leader Chris Cardona, former minister Konrad Mizzi who was fired from his own parliamentary group and finally Muscat, who has now resigned from parliament.

Police also arrested Keith Schembri and Brian Tonna, and Nexia BTs audit licence has been suspended. Yet while this list of departures looks impressive, the absence of any political reckoning in Labour on what led Malta to an institutional fracas, which ultimately created the climate for the assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia, is all the more striking.

So while Abela seems to be delivering in terms of removing impunity, something which cannot be underestimated in the Maltese political context where resignations are rare, he evades the political reckoning which his party and country deserve. Abela has to be commended for instituting reforms on key appointments, but fails in delivering political closure in three important aspects: cutting the umbilical cord between big business and politics through radical transparency reforms and state financing for political parties; investigating the nefarious deals undertaken by Konrad Mizzi and Keith Schembri; and finally convening his party to reflect on what went wrong in the Muscat era.

Culture wars: hunting and migration

While Malta is gripped by COVID-19 insecurities and a daily roll-call of deaths of its elderly citizens, sacrificed on the altar of economic recovery, what we have witnessed so far has been culture wars unleashed from above.

Abela seems keen on appeasing the hunting lobby by literally turning poachers into gamekeepers at Miieb, in that way provoking a negative reaction from both environmentalists and a segment of PN voters appalled by their own partys silence on the issue. Pushing the hunting issue to the fore helps Labour not just to reinforce the countryside alliance it had craftily built during the Spring hunting referendum of 2015, but also to sow confusion inside the PN which suffered its worst decline in pro hunting localities like Zebbug, Siggiewi, Safi and Gozo.

The same strategy is also present in the perverse logic of Abelas inane challenge to Opposition leader Bernard Grech where he demanded he agree with him that Malta is full up with immigrants, in what amounts to agreement with a verbal commitment, and which can only be enforced through an abnegation of international law clearly, a statement that would only serve to fuel toxic, xenophobic sentiment in the country by emboldening bigots. It also offers a ridiculous choice between absolutist positions instead of focusing on everyday community policing, cultural mediation and integration, and investing in deprived communities.

In this context the government could well be manufacturing electoral consent by deploying popular, but misinformed common sense to silence and delegitimatise not just the parliamentary opposition, but also activists who are actually fighting popular and pro working-class struggles but are regularly demonised for advocating social justice for migrants.

The abortion bogeyman

To further murk the waters, Abelas disgraced predecessor Joseph Muscat came close to declare his rational and justified pro-choice stance in an interview on state television, a stance which puts him at odds with Abela and which can only have a polarising effect on civil society. In this context while Labour can afford to remain officially against abortion, it stands to gain from pushing the debate on this issue to the fore to keep liberals away from an opposition where ultra-conservatives are irked by the very idea of a debate on the topic.

In reality even if it remains against, Labour will always be perceived as more liberal than the PN on this particular issue. In this way Labour, which uses Trumpian nonsense on migration to hold on to its redneck vote, can still offer hope to liberals.

But while the country cannot be expected to stop discussing any issue, and abortion has indeed been left under the carpet for ages, Muscats intervention in the nascent debate risks contaminating it with a presence which also makes pro-choice liberals uncomfortable.

Naturally, Muscat provokes the more conservative elements to come out of the woodwork to vilify him, and here he can even find a way to reinvent his damaged political persona, just as Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando had done after the Mistra scandal. But is he throwing a grenade at his own party leader or handing him an effective weapon to disorient the opposition?

A battle-cry for the next election

Abela cant afford to fight an election where the main item on the agenda remains corruption and the scandals of the Muscat era. Neither can the opposition hope for a repeat of the 2017 election. Bernard Grech himself seems to have learnt the lesson by pouncing on the governments handling of elderly care during the pandemic.

Neither can anyone expect voters to dismiss bread and butter issues even if corruption and subservience to big business impinge on long-term sustainability, quality of life and competence in handling the pandemic.

But with COVID-19 crippling the economy and killing the elderly, Abela should not just fall back on Labours economic track record except in emphasising that the rich coffers gave the government breathing space to keep spending up during the pandemic.

When having to deal with this kind of headache, culture wars on migration and hunting have the advantage having no bearing on dominant business elites, unlike more radical demands for stricter planning rules, rent controls and the introduction of a living wage, which Labour seems less keen on pushing to the fore. Without a left-wing alternative and with the PN keen on reassuring business elites and potential donors, Labour can afford to pay homage to these issues without really addressing them.

A real socialist party would fight the next election on a radical platform of transparency, sustainability and social justice. But Abela would prefer presiding over a hotchpotch of issues which keeps unlikely bedfellows the xenophobes, groupies and turncoats, social liberals, partisans, developers and hunters united in an electoral bloc that holds the conservative Nationalists at bay, but riven with massive contradictions and possibly even more scandals for the future as the murky wine gets repackaged into new bottles.

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Culture wars: How hunting, migration and abortion weigh on the next election - MaltaToday