Optimism of the will

A vast majority in Maltese terms has withdrawn its support from both the majoritarian parties in the wake of the 2003 Budget. An astounding 51.8% of respondents in The Sunday Times Budget Survey, published last week, said that they would not vote if there was an election tomorrow, did not reply when asked, or declared for the Greens.

Majoritarian pundits can probably be quite sanguine about it knowing that an election is years away and that, once the real thing is up close, the neutrals will be compelled to take a stand. Still nobody in his or her right mind can afford to shrug off the survey results.

The PN, conquerors of an absolute majority of the vote in the last election, are down to 23.3%. The MLP, strategically positioned to be the only politcal alternative to a government in credibility freefall, face their own black hole at 25%.

At 3.3% in the survey, the Greens appear to have made a 400%+ gain in support in the last six months. It is, in fact, much more. If the pundits parcel out the rebel segment between all three parties, the Greens end up with 6-7%. Alternattiva Demokratika can claim to be in the top ranks of Green parties anywhere. We should be whooping for joy.

We are not. The credibility crash of the political class as a whole is a major concern. No country can be considered to be in good health when it has such little faith in its leadership. Facing an epochal challenge in coping with EU membership, it is an additional and a very serious handicap.

The last 20 years or so have seen confrontation swing from just short of outright civil war to a sullen unfruitful truce between sworn enemies. Nothing else. No dialogue, no debate. Common cause basics such as the country's active neutrality stance, its nuclear free status were no-go areas. More bread and butter issues like the drydocks reform were simply pushed off the political agenda at horrendous cost.

Rent reform was not mentioned except to make yet another patch-up job in 1995. Politcal employment disguising the real unemployment figures before and after 1987 never got a mention in a worthwhile debate. Pension reform was delayed for decades. Today's proposed welfare rollback is welcomed by its victims-to-be because of years of electoral extravagnaces and sloppy administration.

The economic cost of making no significant progress in democratic development since 1981 has come home to us in the 2003 Budget. We are about to pay the price for having a government that cannot say boo to a goose and an Opposition that is constrained by the system to exploit any politcal advantage it can bag out of any kind of reform.

In 1995 we heard a lot about governability. The country was persuaded that if the Greens were in parliament the tail would wag the dog. Nobody seems to have the faintest idea how a multi-party system works. Do the German Greens dictate to Germany? Do the European Greens run the European Parliament? Has Latvia ground to a halt because the Greens are in the government coalition? No, they do politics: concede to gain, negotiate without compromising principles.

It happens everywhere except in Malta. It happens in Gibraltar and San Marino too. If Greens were power-mad, would they spend 14 years in a third party in Malta? Would we refuse a seat in Parliament offered to us in exchange for not contesting an election? What would we gain by being a nuisance instead of finding workable solutions?

How governable is a country that is at the mercy of the hunting lobby or the boathouse squatters? What sort of governability do we have in a country where the Prime Minister dares not enter the premises of the country's only government-owned heavy industry except when a national tragedy occurs?

Why should we spend Lm300 million in subsidising foreign shipowners to avoid possibly imaginary industrial mayhem? Are we inviting chaos today? Why does it take 40 years to reform public transport and close to 60 to think of reforming the rent laws? Why did we have to wait for EU membership to have a hope of dealing with our massive environmental problems?

Our politics are fossilised and the people are clearly fed up of having a natural history museum instead of a parliament. There is a widespread exasperation with the impotence of the government and the eternally destructive élan of the Opposition. It is dawning on us all that an alternation in government would only produce a role reversal, not any real change. If that is what will happen in 2008, what exactly would have happened? What would have changed?

I know that a multi-party system will not take us all to heaven overnight but it will take us somewhere. It will take us to the land of alliances and finely balanced compromises, consensus rather than endless confrontation. I cannot bear to think that we will all be going nowhere forever.

The Greens have done and will continue to do their utmost against all odds to keep this option open. After that, it will be up to the people to take it or to go on as before. Greens are eternal optimists. It is the country that needs a hope of real change. There are always more of us working to make it happen.

Dr Vassallo is chairman of Alternattiva Demokratika - The Green Party

www.alternattiva.org.mt