Joseph Muscat and his political games

The gay community in Malta will be forever grateful to Joseph Muscat for first introducing civil unions and now gay marriage. On the civil liberties front, his Labour movement cannot but be lauded; it has taken the country forward in this respect, ensuring that rights are equal to all, not exclusive to certain groups of people.

But the fact remains that Muscat has, once again, played a political game, and has won hands down.

Both Muscat and Busuttil had previously stated they were in favour of gay marriage but when Muscat then announced that he was including it in the PL electoral manifesto, Busuttil felt obliged to do the same, even if he did not have time to properly discuss the matter with his parliamentary group. This was Step 1 of Muscat’s game.

Step 2 of the game was to present a law in a form that the PN would find hard to digest. What was promised to be a simple change in name – from civil union to gay marriage – turned out to be something that is much more complicated. The PN, having already promised to legalise same-sex marriage, could now not object. Instead, it proposed some 80 amendments in a bid to stop the government from removing terms such as ‘mother’ and ‘father’ from the law.

Step 3 of Muscat’s game was to reject all of the Opposition’s amendments and, in the process use his media to make the PN look like it was against the concept of gay marriage – the ‘old and traditional conservative party that had also abstained on civil union.’

Step 4 came naturally. The conservative elements within the PN criticised the bill and called for a free vote. Busuttil, looking back at the civil unions fiasco, could not accept this. He remained steadfast in his decision and refused to give a free vote. But all that happened in between opened up the party to criticism, with the PL media rambling on about a ‘split’ within the PN.

Step 5 came on Wednesday evening when Joseph Muscat requested MPs to declare their votes instead of following the established voting process. He did so knowing full well that several PN MPs were not happy to vote in favour of the Bill and he wanted to expose this as much as possible. Busuttil did not bite, and rejected the request. But the PL media made sure to tell us that the PN leader had refused to declare the vote. Another reason why Muscat might have made such a request is the fact that some PN MPs were not present for the actual vote. Mario Galea had called in sick but Claudio Grech and Carm Mifsud Bonnici, who were in the chamber earlier in the evening, were not present when the vote was taken. Fine, they did not need to be there physically because in such a case the Whip votes for the entire group, but surely one is not expected to walk out while Malta was passing such a historic bill. The reasons for their absence are not known but the fact that both Mifsud Bonnici and Grech are known to hold conservative views raises questions.

Step 6 of the game was the way in which the celebrations in Valletta were engineered. The government organized the event and held it in front of the Auberge de Castille, when it should have been held in front of Parliament or any other ‘neutral’ ground. What we saw on that stage on Wednesday evening looked more like a Labour Party rally than a national celebration.

It was clear that the plan worked and the PN felt very uncomfortable attending, with Mario de Marco, who went instead of Simon Busuttil, looking very much like a fish out of water standing behind Joseph Muscat and Helena Dalli. The fact that MGRM was all praise for the government and barely acknowledged the Opposition only made things worse.

Still Busuttil should not have shunned the event, no matter how uncomfortable it would have been. By failing to show up (and sending his Number 2 in his stead), he allowed Muscat to win the final, and most crucial step of the game.