The winner’s burden and the loser’s advantage

The people have spoken. Again. Despite all the scandals, all the controversies, all the inquiries, “that story we are not supposed to discuss”, Malta has elected a Labour government. Again. Yet again.

So the question now is not who won or why. That is obvious, and ventilating it makes for a hollowly bitter sound.

The interesting question is: who is happiest about it? Supremely happy, of course, are the noisome oiks whose one aim in life seems to be desecrating the de facto memorial to Daphne Caruana Galizia.   They descended on it with sadistic glee, around the time their Supreme Leader was being sworn in.

Robert Abela ought to be pretty chuffed. Prime ministers generally enjoy winning elections. It is one of the perks of the job.

Yet there is something faintly awkward about this particular victory, and his body language at the swearing-in seemed to hint at that. Throughout the campaign, Abela insisted he was the underdog. The claim sounded about as convincing as a billionaire complaining about the price of bread, but perhaps he knew something the rest of us did not. After all, while he was technically winning, he somehow managed to get himself overtaken by Alex Borg.

The surveys told us that it would not happen. The surveys, it turns out, got this ever so slightly wrong, so perhaps Abela really was the underdog after all.

Not in the electoral sense, obviously, it turns out he wasn’t, so all the hand-outs and promises weren’t really needed.

Then there is Borg. He did not become prime minister. He probably would have preferred to. Most ambitious politicians generally do.

Yet it is difficult to imagine him being anything other than delighted.

On a personal level, he stormed the polls. He transformed the atmosphere around the Nationalist Party that, not very long ago, appeared to have accepted permanent opposition as a lifestyle choice.

He halved the gap. More importantly, he made people believe that the gap could be halved. You begin to understand why Abela was in such a hurry to call the elections while he still possessed the advantage of incumbency, patronage and an apparently bottomless supply of taxpayers’ money.

Then there is Clyde Caruana: assuming he remains finance minister, he may be the least happy winner in the country.

Dissing the opposition on a campaign is easy, and as he could see from his Supreme Leader, making campaign promises is also easy-peasy.

Paying for them, on the other hand, is rather more difficult, now that those cluckers have come home to roost.  Somebody now has to locate the money for all the cheques, all the schemes, all the subsidies, all the gifts and all the other electoral confetti scattered across the landscape during the campaign.

And that somebody is likely to be Caruana, so he’s probably thinking that there are moments when being the only grown-up in the room must feel less like an honour and more like a punishment.

And finally, there is Joseph Muscat, the man who supposedly left politics years ago, who continues to haunt it with the persistence of Banquo’s ghost.

His former lawyer, thankfully for him, remains astonishingly influential. His allies remain astonishingly comfortable. His shadow remains astonishingly long, but rumours swirl of revelations yet to emerge that may shed further light on exactly what his administration was doing while the rest of us were being reassured that everything was perfectly normal.

Naturally, we cannot possibly discuss such matters. Perish the thought.

On balance, I think the happiest man today is Alex Borg. Not because he won. He didn’t. But because he lost.

Winning would have meant inheriting a country facing serious challenges at precisely the moment when Europe, the global economy and international politics all appear determined to audition for the role of oncoming freight train.

Instead, he gets something far more valuable: time. Time to consolidate. Time to rebuild. Time to persuade people that this was not a one-off.

And while Abela spends the next few years trying to deliver everything he promised everybody all at once, Borg can simply stand there, watch, and wait. Sometimes the man who finishes second is the one who ends up smiling longest.