All quiet at Christmas

There is a stasis in our political life at the moment. People’s minds focus on the approaching Christmas holidays and people flock to the shops and to Valletta.

“The MerciecaVassallo side point at the position on abortion as an example. There is no Opposition any more, they declare. And there are many Opposition MPs who are employed with the government, even if then they are allowed to skip going for work.”

Even the Republic Day official celebration went off without a hitch and the President was whisked to the palace without last year’s catcalls and boos, his last time. And he must have passed in front of the Daphne shrine without batting an eyelid.

The prime minister joined other heads of government in Brussels where they talked about

Ukraine and other countries joining the EU, rather than the situation in Gaza.

Locally, any discussion on the social media regarded more controversial development applications, more mistakes in street signing and in the last 24 hours the increase in the price of milk and its impact on the cost of living.

Politically, that is on the political level, the stasis or lack of storms is very evident. With Parliament going into recess the political stations and even the partisan media struggle to find themes. One cannot help but notice that L-Orizzont has devoted pages after pages to the European Parliament and its work, not a usual topic for the paper.

Of course, this is all in preparation for the European Parliament election in June which will be coupled with the local council elections but it has been reported that the parties are sometimes finding it difficult to find enough candidates.

Certainly, although it is Christmastime, we do not seem that overwhelmed with parties with free bars organised by candidates like last time. Compare this to the open bar atmosphere before the last election and you immediately see the difference.

This atmosphere, which I have called stasis, can also be the result of more and more people moving away from the two party configuration of Maltese politics, something confirmed by countless opinion polls.

But it could also be the result of the two parties getting to resemble more and more each other, getting to be carbon copies of each other.

This is a claim that one gets to hear coming more and more from the ranks of disgruntled Nationalist supporters who are getting to move more and more to the Right.

An example of this is Edwin Vassallo, former Parliamentary Secretary, who was not elected in the last election and who has taken to write opinion articles with an AltRight bent on Simon Mercieca’s webpage, where he gets some support (but also rabid opposition from desktop warriors supporting the governor).

Vassallo does not figure in the opposition to Bernard Grech from supporters of Adrian Delia. The Simon Mercieca side is fiercely critical of those (mostly female) candidates who got elected not through the votes they got but through the compensatory mechanism introduced in recent years.

These add-ons are being held as mainly responsible for the party in Opposition coming to resemble more and more the party in government.

The Mercieca-Vassallo side point at the position on abortion as an example. There is no Opposition any more, they declare. And there are many Opposition MPs who are employed with the government, even if then they are allowed to skip going for work.

But there is an Opposition, even if an extra-parliamentary one. Those who gather together every 16th of the month to commemorate Daphne Caruana Galizia. The followers of Repubblika (which Mercieca delights to call Repubblikini). And a few others.

But even here things are getting softer. The vim has gone.

What may wake people up, come the new year, will be the price increases and the austerity measures that the government will be forced by Brussels to introduce. And the realisation that the much-trumpeted COLA increase is simply not sufficient. A person who buys two cartons of milk a day will see the €108 given by the government being absorbed over the year.