Up close and personal

On March 31, 2003, Austin Bencini wrote: "So if in 2003 Alternattiva (sic) were to have a seat in parliament and the result would be PN 32 seats, MLP 32 seats and AD one seat, but the MLP were to get 50.1 per cent of the first preferences then the electoral commission would have to add two more seats to the MLP without even bothering to ask if (sic) there is a political coalition between AD and PN! Final result would be MLP - 34 seats, PN - 32, AD - one seat." (The Times - "A coalition of voters... not of seats.")

It was gobsmacking. The man is a lawyer, a lecturer in constitutional law. It was outrageous. If the MLP had gained 50.1 per cent of the vote, what else would he have happen? It might be a "nightmarish" scenario to people who dread MLP rule but it is democracy for crying out loud. What is he teaching law students? Such a statement from a person in his position challenges the democratic credentials of our foremost teaching institution. Does anybody care?

How would not voting AD have helped the situation if the MLP had 50.1 per cent of the vote? Now that we have time and we are a little more relaxed, perhaps Dr Bencini could find the time to explain his stance? If AD supporters did not vote at all, the MLP's 50.1 per cent would simply go up a notch.

He seemed unable or unwilling to understand that AD's attempt to gain a seat on the eighth district was all that AD could do to give additional security to the yes to the EU camp.

In constitutional terms only a third party could offer any security in the event that a combined AD, PN polled 50 per cent + votes but the PN did not make it over the 50 per cent mark on its own. At that point the will of the absolute majority could only be made to prevail through a majority of seats in parliament and no compensation mechanism would come into play. Dr Bencini deliberately discounted this scenario. His pitch for a PN absolute majority made sense, his failure to support the AD guarantee using second preferences remains suspect.

AD abandoned all other efforts and concentrated on gathering No. 2 votes in the eighth district where it could do absolutely no harm to the yes to the EU lobby leaving the PN to achieve all it could in No. 1 votes.

Dr Bencini could have acknowledged the fact that AD's strategy was prudent and safe as far as the common pro-EU policy was concerned. He did not. Is such an omission from an expert in the field an untruth?

It is perfectly acceptable that Dr Bencini campaigned vociferously for all No. 1 votes to go to the PN. Everybody is allowed to be partisan. Nobody expects everybody to be an AD fan. AD campaigned for the No. 2 vote exonerating its adherents from any failure to give it their first preference. We went as far as logic will allow to shed No. 1 votes towards the PN without giving up our very existence. It worked. Most Greens voted for the EU and a few of us held the fort for the rest.

It was a grassroots deal that went down well with voters in the eighth district. AD was not taking a free ride, it was making a fair deal with real people. Clearly getting beyond the 16.6 per cent quota threshold in the eighth district would require a wide consensus, far beyond the AD core.

The response was truly phenomenal. I met hundreds of people who had voted PN all their lives who would have been more than glad to give AD No. 2. I met PN hunters who promised their No. 2 to AD for metaphorically shooting straight and telling the truth. I met Labourites who also admire our straight talking and in a pro-EU mood would give AD either No. 1 or No. 2. We never asked for a No. 1 in the eighth district, we did not need to. Some AD core voters were shocked.

It looked like it was going to work. Why was Dr Bencini so against it? What would have been so disastrous if AD won a seat in parliament whether or not the PN made it over the 50 per cent + 1 mark? What was so scary about that?

It certainly scared the PN. With EU membership at stake as far as the rest of the population was concerned, all efforts were focused to defeat the AD strategy.

AD in the eighth district was not taking the crucial No. 1 vote. Its campaign had no effect on whether or not the PN gained an absolute majority. Why would the world fall apart if AD was elected to parliament?

How about the AD No. 2 vote nationwide? Has anybody counted it? Can anybody count it? If we have been in the confidence trick business we could claim that many tens of thousands of people voted AD No. 2. We do not know, nobody ever will. Can anybody explain what deleterious effect it had or could have had on the pro-EU project?

It is as invisible and uncountable as AD had said. In all districts except the eighth it could have had no effect at all. Once the AD candidates had only a handful of No. 1 votes from the absolutely irreducible AD core voters there was no way No. 2 votes ascribed to them would ever be registered to their credit. In almost all cases the vote skipped from No. 1 to No. 3 preference because the AD candidate had already been eliminated. AD asked for the No. 2 vote as a vote of sympathy, to release No. 1 votes to the PN and to allow voters to express an almost symbolic preference for AD for their own satisfaction.

They were not allowed to do even that. In the most outrageous confidence trick attempted since Alfred Sant claimed to have won the EU referendum, the PN, PN apologists and the PN leader himself denounced the AD strategy as some sort of Macchiavellian scheme to make the sky fall. Nobody explained exactly how. Nobody has and nobody will because nobody can.

There was much more than a flurry of articles by Dr Bencini. The televised last minute speech by Prime Minister Eddie Fenech Adami, watched by hundreds of thousands of viewers, included a dramatic 17 minutes where he staked all his credibility on the incredible.

AD had done its bit in the 2003 election to ensure it would not endanger the main issue. When the carpet bombing telephone campaign started in the eighth district scaring people witless about giving any preference to AD, we realised that the PN was sure of EU membership through yet another unpublished poll.

At that point AD getting elected in the eighth district was not crucial to the EU membership project. We had sought support mainly from PN voters and it was no surprise that the PN could deceive them. Those most trusted are most powerful in that. Ask Labourites who believed Dr Sant that they had won the referendum and would win the election.

We had given the PN an opportunity to escape the seek-and-destroy stereotype it had been constrained into in its decades long battle with the MLP. It had a chance to behave decently with an ally. It was no big surprise that it has no programme for cooperation.

We had already refused a seat in parliament which needed no ticket to ride at all. We were neither desperate nor Macchiavellian about our eighth district strategy. We were open and honest.

The PN-AD alliance was not ever really on the cards because the PN could not face a free election limited to an equal contest with AD. We made our offer unconditional to prevent the PN having any escape route and blaming us for its failure.

No, we hope never to make it over the 50 per cent mark and we exist to prevent any single party having such majoritarian ambitions, but if all the PN's political prisoners had been released to choose between at least the two pro-EU parties, somebody might have had a shock. Who's riding whose ticket?

By Joe Saliba's admission, 8,000 traditional Labour voters opted for the PN in the 2003 election. More tickets to ride? Was this really an election or a repeat referendum in which we extended the life of the government we do not deserve? We all deserve better, but the alternative was worse.

There was an alternative to a two party parliament but the PN balked at the prospect. Having excluded the possibility of an alliance, the possibility of a joint electoral programme was gone. If AD was elected, the PN could not negotiate on what AD would do from the opposition benches. Pointed PQs? Even that was scary.

Let's face it, everybody knew that once the PN gained an absolute majority of votes, its seat majority and its ability to form another single party government was beyond question. As Dr Bencini himself pointed out, the MLP needed seat compensation in 1996. With the same majority the PN had a five seat majority in 1998 and once more in 2003.

Lightning strikes thrice in the same place or are the electoral districts gerrymandered? A subject carefully avoided in constitutional law lectures?

It was clear that an AD seat would still allow the PN to form a single party government. Why was the PN so desperate to avoid anything beyond minimal pluralism?

Preserving the status quo required the absence of AD. I doubt that Dr Bencini was privy to such musings, however he was a willing if unwitting tool in the project at significant cost to his professional standing and personal credibility. Let's hope it was just a passing slip when so many were losing their marbles. It should not go unnoticed.