Recent contributions to The Times by John B. Borg Bartolo and Alfred Mifsud (March 25 and 28 respectively) on the March 8 EU referendum result, particularly the latter's, are very disturbing.
I would go so far as to describe Mr Mifsud's thinking on the subject as dangerous.
Mr Borg Bartolo says that "One does not need to be a mathematician to make a simple analysis of the final result and come to the conclusion as to who emerged the winner, if there was truly a winner". I agree with the first part of his statement before the comma, but not the second after the comma. Of course one does not need to be a mathematician to decide who won the referendum. One does not need any analysis, simple or complex.
Maltese law and democratic practice all over the world are clear; winners in referenda and elections are declared on the basis of the number of valid votes cast, not the population of eligible votes.
Going by these established rules, the referendum produced a very clear result; the yes had a majority of over 19,000 votes or close to 54 per cent of the valid votes and gives the government a strong mandate to enter Malta into the EU.
There is no other democratic way to interpret the result. This is what happens in every truly democratic country on the face of the earth that holds free elections or referenda (including Switzerland, which does not seem to be the MLP's model where democracy is concerned).
Any other way of interpreting it is politically dangerous. The whole of democratic Europe has confirmed the Maltese result and is bemused with the MLP's bizarre attempts to twist it to its own purposes.
In Malta, no one has challenged it as illegal. Mr Borg Bartolo, cloaks his partisan conclusions with self-proclaimed "impartiality and objectivity". There is only one way of "impartially" and "objectively" establishing a result in a referendum and that is through the ballot box.
The procedure is simple and decisive. Immediately after making his statement that "the only quality one needs in such an instance", to work out the referendum result, "is a good sense of impartiality and objectivity, together with that other ingredient called logic", Mr Borg Bartolo continues on the very next line with the words "I do believe", immediately acknowledging the subjectivity of his arguments.
But instead of acknowledging his subjectivity, he goes on to describe it as "the nearest one can get to the truth vis-a-vis the electorate's wishes regarding EU membership".
I do not know how to describe a statement like this. Arrogance perhaps! No one has the right or qualification to interpret the electorate's wishes. In a democracy the electorate makes its own wishes known in the ballot box. Democratic results are not calculated by speculation, mathematical or otherwise, but in concrete numbers, by the votes cast. Any deviation from this rule puts us on the road to anarchy.
Mr Mifsud calls "democratic grounds" rather than objectivity and logic to his aid in his attempt to show the result to be "inconclusive". Half way through his argument he has a howler for us. The "no campaign", he says, "readily admitted that its joy for winning by default of the yes campaign to get the outright majority they took for granted, does not necessarily mean endorsement of the 'partnership' policy". Mr Mifsud must think that we have very short memories!
What about his leader's cry Il-partnership rebah, pronounced umpteen times and splashed for days over the Labour media, including the screens of Super One television? And the cry of the MLP supporters as they took to the streets. That, I suppose is "readily admitting"! But, then, one really expects everything from the MLP camp today. Even preposterous theories like Mr Mifsud's that referenda and elections are won and lost by default instead of by votes!
I have been teaching democratic theory at the university, from the Athenians on, for over two decades and have never encountered a theory like it. The disturbing thing is that he goes on to berate others for having "no idea of what democracy is about"!
As usual he begins his article with a bad premise. He describes the arguments of those who, like myself, contend that the referendum was clearly won with a yes vote, as inconsistent and contradictory. "Sometimes," he says, "they argue that the yes has to be calculated solely as a percentage of the valid votes and sometimes they argue that the no camp should not count in its bag the total of the uncollected, abstained and cancelled votes". Wrong! There is no sometimes this and sometimes that. We claim both categorically.
We say that democratic results are based on valid votes cast and that uncollected, abstained and cancelled votes do not count. So the inconsistency is in Mr Mifsud's mind. He calls the view, held worldwide, that referenda results are determined by the number of valid votes cast "ludicrous and undemocratic". Why? Because, he says, the MLP gave instructions to its followers to abstain or cancel their vote and nobody complained about this before the referendum.
One wonders where Mr Mifsud was before the referendum, when people were telling the MLP leader that instructions like these were an affront to democracy. He cannot have been in Malta!
"The Labour Party," he continues, "gave advanced warning" that it would count those who abstained or cancelled their vote with the no votes. He precedes this with another piece of "logic" which would be side-splitting were it not so dangerous.
"No section of the law," he says, "provides any interpretation that abstention and cancelled votes following official party policy should not be calculated in interpreting the result". Does he want us to take him seriously?
So now, according to his warped argumentation, we should interpret the law by what it does not say not by what it says, just as we should interpret election results on the basis of votes not cast rather than those cast! And he wonders "on what democratic grounds" we can resist his thinking!
I assume we are talking about the same "democratic grounds" here, those that are rooted in the western democratic tradition, not those of some evolving banana republic!
Besides, it escapes his notice that the MLP's opponents in the yes camp, the prime minister and the PN included, had also made their own declarations before the referendum; that they would not play with the MLP's rules or recognise its interpretations of the referendum result. And why should they?
We have laws in Malta about how referendum results are determined; these, not the "advanced warnings" of MLP, are the legal and legitimate instruments for determining them. Again, once you stray from this path, once you accept that a party has the right to determine democratic politics according to its political exigencies, you are on the road to anarchy.
Again I will remind Mr Mifsud that what they were celebrating in the streets, and what they were told to celebrate by Dr Sant, was the victory of the "partnership" option proposed by his party, not any lack of endorsement of the yes vote.
Once the MLP starts playing these sorts of games one starts even to distrust any "assurance" its leaders can give that they will respect the forthcoming general election results.
Labour has already shown itself to be a sore loser twice, after the 1998 general election and now after the referendum. Why should we expect anything different from it if it loses the next general election?
The MLP may very well win that election, of course. Then, Mr Mifsud promises us a "serious referendum"! What would that be, pray? One where one side requires 60 per cent of the votes cast to win while the other needs a mere 40 per cent to affirm itself?
And what will Mr Mifsud say if the PN in opposition decides to play the MLP's game and give similar instructions to its members in this serious referendum and turns it into a shambles, as his party has tried to do with this one?
I am sorry, Mr Mifsud, not for you but for the country, the MLP leadership has seriously undermined its democratic credentials. And serious voters should consider this fact carefully when they decide who is to take the country forward (not backward, hopefully) in the coming election.