Joseph Muscat’s legacy: civil rights and an economic boom

Dr Mario Thomas Vassallo

Resident academic, Department of Public Policy at the University of Malta

From a public leadership perspective, Muscat’s premiership is an exceptional phenomenon that merits to be objectively investigated in the future with the benefit of hindsight. Although inheriting a political party in shambles, Muscat managed to revolutionize its internal structures, ideology and modus operandi in a very short time. This was no easy feat, particularly when one considers how traumatic this process is within the PN which is in the same state of play the PL was when Muscat announced his candidacy for party leader back in 2008. His charismatic and tech- nocratic knowhow, reinforced by an efficient institutional machinery, brought together the different factions of his party, where the staunch Labourites started to call their party ‘home’ again and, simultaneously, the newcomers, business people and former PN supporters and activists were given space to manoeuvre and incubate new policy avenues. Gluing these conflictual interests into a single entity, which Muscat adamantly calls ‘movement’, is his biggest contribution to the Party. Although this enduring glue secured him legitimacy and, eventually, two astronomical electoral successes, it can also be looked at as being the tyranny of a single narrative that banishes open and inquisitive minds.

His major legacy as prime minister is going to be twofold: civil rights and economic boom. From a Machiavellian standpoint, he was shrewd to identify the Achilles heel of the PN, that is, its core ideological dependence on the social teachings of the Catholic Church regarding ethical and moral issues. His persistent, progressive drive towards the achievement of more civil rights continued to hammer down the PN’s parliamentary group under Gonzi, Busuttil and Delia’s helms. On the other, the economic success was the result of two essential factors: (i) an economic infrastructure and diversification that have endured the financial crisis without huge losses and (ii) a liberalised economic model that opened the gates for insatiable foreign direct investment and, consequently, exorbitant influx of migrant workers. The fact that the Maltese are nowadays discussing the diseconomies of scale on both a macro and micro economic/social levels is in itself an acknowledgement of Malta’s resilience and ‘miracle’ economy.

The dark shadows involving flagrant bad practices concerning good governance and environmental matters will of course continue to loom Muscat’s power trajectory. While his premiership, originally calling for meritocracy and accountability, failed miserably to pass the smell test of corruption, dumping the crucial factors of environmental and economic sustainability has the potential to dismantle Muscat’s legacy in the long run.