I have no idea what the Malta Labour Party's election post mortem report has to say about commitment to democracy. My guess is that it makes painful reading.

The scene at Ta' Qali immediately after the announcement of the EU referendum results was an outrage which cannot be glossed over by any rapporteur having the slightest wish to retain any form of personal credibility. It was a deliberate assault on the foundations of our lives together.

It was committed with malice aforethought. Weeks and months ahead of the dramatic perpetration, the groundwork was laid to defeat the essence of the referendum: the direct expression of the will of the people.

How could anyone ever claim that abstention was a denial? How could the sick and the dying be claimed for the no camp? The imprisoned but unconvicted? Those abroad or even those who deliberately stayed away because they could not bring themselves to say yes or no against their party?

What of the deliberate misinterpretation of the law to frighten those who had a right to vote? Anybody whose name appeared on the electoral register when the referendum date was announced had a right to vote. Many who returned from abroad and were fully entitled to vote were falsely threatened with prosecution and Lm500 fines by letters directly addressed to them.

There was a massive, concerted attempt to prevent a free vote. It was disgusting. It should have been disgusting to everybody. It should have been particularly disgusting to those who tell themselves they are Leftists. Those whose hearts beat faster when "the people" are mentioned in political speeches, those who believe in equality of rights, all of us who claim to be democrats.

It was not so. It was a shameful exhibition of subservience to party. It could not have been otherwise. There are no heroes in the MLP capable of going against the leadership, the party media machine, against their own political ambitions. If there were rank and file Labourites whose teeth were set on edge by their party's tactics, they could not be expected to organise a grassroots revolt on the eve of an election.

It happened. It is undeniable. It is history. It is a shame forever. In no way is its awful burden reduced by the fact that it had happened before, at every attempt at referendum in Maltese history or by the other side. I do not belong to the other side. I was a babe in arms when the last referendum took place.

It was a violence to me and to every other Maltese citizen that the outrage was repeated reversing half a century of excruciatingly slow political maturation. The damage done to us all is incalculable. The damage done to the MLP's democratic credentials likewise.

It took us to an early election with memories of political violence re-exhumed. Everybody was betrayed. Not only those who had hoped that the past was dead and buried but also those who had committed to a public role within the MLP to aid its renewal, its regeneration, its rejection of a violent past.

Once more the MLP was Malta's only feared political party. It was a giveaway to the Nationalist Party that was scraping the bottom of the barrel and asking for forgiveness. Why did Alfred Sant engineer yet another PN victory?

It was not enough for the PN. Careful analysis of the referendum result pointed to a PN victory. It had to be seized quickly. An autumn election would be overrun by the country's economic woes exacerbated by an extension of economic paralysis because of electoral uncertainty.

Alternattiva Demokratika - The Green Party was committed to EU membership. It remained consistent in its support of the historic venture. With the election converted into a repeat referendum AD had no choice but to ensure a repeat of the yes victory. Its own future took second place.

This was a second bonanza for the PN. The alliance talks were a sham. AD made no pre-conditions, no arm twisting on any issue on which the PN maintains hypocritical and anachronistic positions. We asked for no paybacks, no cushy posts, nothing. Just to be able to place our support fairly and squarely in the yes to EU camp. If none of our candidates were elected we would ask for nothing in return.

The PN figured they could squeeze us out of existence anyway. They figured that their offer of the speakership or a seat in parliament in return for AD not contesting the election was overgenerous. To their mind it was unthinkable that we would refuse. How could they ever imagine that we would accept a seat in parliament when we had not contested an election? Evidently they would have accepted had the roles been reversed. So why had they made such a fuss about Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici becoming PM without a single vote to his name?

There was also another matter. Had the PN and AD contested the election as an alliance not only would their votes be counted together for the purpose of establishing which side on the EU membership issue would govern but it would also be Malta's first partially free election.

Within the yes to EU camp it would be a completely free election. Yes voters would be able to choose in complete freedom between the PN and AD, without any fear at all of inadvertently rewarding the MLP or threatening Malta's accession to the EU.

The PN had to avoid a free election at all costs. To PN leadership minds AD was taking a free ride, it was "stealing" PN votes. If people voted freely, the PN would be "robbed" of "its" votes. It would take a huge bite out of nominal PN support and make it clear to everyone that the PN is not the mammoth it is made out to be. It would change the country's political future, it would make changes in the electoral system inevitable, it would allow AD to open an endless series of Pandora's boxes in parliamentary speeches: all the skeletons in the PN cupboard would come out and dance. AD would expect to be represented on the Electoral Commission, the Broadcasting Authority. What would happen to the stranglehold the other political parties have on the media? Democracy was frightening.

The alliance talks were aborted by the PN candidates who filed their candidacies on the first day set for the purpose. It was a fait accompli. There would be no alliance, no offer held, no mutual obligation of any kind. The PN was free to be itself and AD had no choice but suicide to PN minds.

I hope never to live through such moments ever again. I know I will because Malta is dominated by the PN and the MLP. If AD did not contest the election it would not exist officially as a political party until after it contested another election. We would return to the pre-1992 situation where we had no access to the media, no right to be consulted on decisions that determined our future, we would not even have the right to scrutinise the voting procedure in elections.

All our 14-year climb up the democratic ladder would be reversed by a PN snake. The country's hopes of going beyond minimal pluralism would be dashed - not because we were weak but because we were too strong for the PN's liking. We had succeeded in becoming a real threat to the system and that was precisely why we had to be destroyed.

I love AD because it can face its own death. Not with equanimity but with courage. For some hours it seemed as if AD would die. Finally, it was decided that it would suffer the onslaught of history and survive. We had an obligation to our members, those who gave their time over many years in the hope of achieving respectable democracy in Malta. It was the fire that tempers steel.

We also had an obligation to the country which we could not shirk. In no way should our survival threaten EU membership. The PN could nonchalantly refuse an alliance, we would not take risks with the country's future. Our campaign would be concentrated in a district where we would not ask for no. 1 votes, nationwide we would ask for no. 2 votes shedding our increased support in favour of the PN.

The PN was prepared to split the yes camp, we were not, whether or not the PN cooperated. AD was shut off the PN media as effectively as the PN had been shut off the national media under a previous MLP government. We have not appeared on Net TV since the referendum campaign ended and we are unlikely to be hosted there until the European parliament election campaign is over. AD was attacked in speeches, home visits, telephone calls, e-mail campaigns. AD did not retaliate except to outrageous fabrications.

In no way did AD's campaign threaten a PN victory. If the PN did not make it over the 50 per cent mark on its own, only the election of an AD candidate could ensure that the yes camp would govern the country. Only one AD candidate had even a remote chance of being elected, only in the eighth district where the no. 2 votes could give the country that added security. Still the PN attacked.

It was clear at that point that the PN had no need of added security. Its polls had made its victory certain. It was eliminating AD to close the door on tripartite politics. The PN mummy was sure of eternal life and was ending the future for the living. Joe Saliba's post-election claim that there was no obligation binding the PN exposes the utter amorality of PN thinking.

No democrat needs a written or spoken obligation to avoid cheating and lying to avoid the democratic expression of the people. Politics is as dirty as people allow it to be. Mr Saliba knows that the people allow anything and that he can speak it out loud without blushing.

Only days before the PN leader had spoken his political doom to ensure his party's victory. In the last minutes of the last speech of the election campaign, he devoted 20 minutes to making AD a threat to EU membership. It was completely untrue. It was a deliberate untruth told to over half the population watching the performance on live TV. All PN supporters were hoodwinked, deliberately, effectively, some will make the untruth their truth forever more.

If the video of Alfred Sant's entry into Ta' Qali on March 9, 2003 remains forever an inescapable liability for his party's and his own political prospects, the video of Dr Fenech Adami convincing the country of a fabrication should end his career in shame.

It would not. The PN will air the Sant video endlessly with endless political profit. AD cannot air Dr Fenech Adami's speech. The few minutes a year AD is officially allowed are far less than the time Dr Fenech Adami took to create hysteria out of nothing. Do not say "Malta" and "democracy" in the same breath; it becomes humbug.

AD has survived. It is stronger than ever. It is still Malta's only hope of respectable democracy. Boasting? No. An unflinching obligation to democracy is nothing to boast about. It is the binding, minimum duty of every one of us. If the other parties cut corners and we do not, we are not better than them, they are worse, far worse than us.

We are calling for an alliance of Maltese people - Red, Blue and Green, of all our friends and neighbours who will be entitled to vote in the European parliament election, to make an issue of democracy; to determine to make a statement in favour of the basics on which their lives and futures depend utterly; to determine to escape from all political prisons, never to be duped again, never to be used, never to be made to bear the shame of threatening our common bond, the very foundation of our future together.

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