In the last months of the Labour administration that ended with the 1987 election it was clear that an amendment to the electoral system ensuring majority rule would necessarily entail a change of government. In conceding majority rule, the Labour government was resigning itself to a spell in opposition.

The pendulum was expected to swing from one extremity to the other and it should be no surprise that the concession of basic democracy was not eagerly anticipated by all. There was a strong resistance within the Labour leadership to the constitutional changes that would definitely avoid a repeat of the 1981 anomaly when the PN, with an absolute majority of the vote, went into opposition. Not all politicians are democrats at heart.

The violence unleashed by the injustice of the 1981 election results had traumatised the country. The government ruled against the will of the people and was paranoid about the fierce resistance put up by the opposition. Paranoia kills.

Today it is hard to believe the contempt for one another's humanity. Bombed and torched political party clubs were a regular feature in the press. Some still boast, through notices on their façades, of the number of times they had risen from the ashes. The oppression was inescapable and the resistance was glorious. People died, many more were ruined.

It was a war. Truth was the first casualty and there were many more. It was clear that polarisation had brought us to the point where we did not respect the humanity of the other side. Fear bred hatred and resentment became entrenched in prejudice.

Intelligent people surrendered their critical faculties. Outrage was rationalised and crime was justified. No concession to the other side was admissible. The generation of Nationalists that lived as exiles in their own country through the 1970s and 1980s will never be able to see anything good in Labour.

Few of them could be bothered to see that their political formation runs closely parallel to that of their counterparts. The structural violence of the 1960s was less spectacular. There had been no blood on the streets and no gunfire but the oppression was real, a daily experience. Class distinctions were a yawning abyss. Poverty still meant hunger and religious interference in politics left indelible scars. Thousands experienced a contempt for their humanity and were primed for repayment in kind. The seeds of the 1980s were sown in the 1960s: the rotten fruit still hangs around today.

When Alfred Sant visited the Ta' Qali counting hall in 2003 and drove his supporters to take to the streets to celebrate a defeat, all the fear and hatred was re-exhumed. Young voters could not understand what had been stirred. For their seniors the Beast that was dead had returned to life, a nightmare walked abroad. The PN could not have asked for more.

If the PN had been economical with the truth about EU accession and untruthful about the economy, it was Labour that generated the panic needed to ensure the result of the 2003 election. It is all to the merit of Dr Sant that we are now citizens of the EU and he is the Leader of the Opposition.

At the core of the other parties, the Beast had never died. The unavowable deeds of the 1980s, the unholy alliances made then, still determine loyalties and commitment. There is still the smell of the blood of Karen Grech and Raymond Caruana in their nostrils. It is still on somebody's hands.

It is to the great merit of the Labour Party that in conceding defeat in 2003 it acknowledged the need to submit to the people's choice on EU membership. It cannot have been easy. Many in the leadership had been privately in favour of membership and had found themselves mouthing absurdities. In the election campaign they had surrendered self-respect and commonsense to claim that their party had won the EU referendum. The foot-soldiers, driven first to snarling loathing of the EU and then told to stand down, felt violated in all their macho pride.

After aborting New Labour to recoup the Old Guard after the 1998 election, Dr Sant was constrained by political reality to take a huge gamble once more. For spectators, Labour did a U-turn on EU membership.

For the Labour ancients it was an S-bend from Modern Labour to the Mintoffian reincarnation to the new thing about Europe. It continues to oscillate perceptibly in a declining meander.

Dr Sant must be eternally grateful that the PN is in such complete disarray. He is able to put a brave face on his own serpentine progress.

Neither of the other parties can afford to admit the epochal significance of a massive vote to a third party in the 2004 election. In the face of a turbulent political history creating irreducible prejudice in vast segments of the population, the Greens have become the fifth largest Green Party in Europe and probably in the world. Malta is trying to get rid of the worst of its past and recognises that the burden of entrenched prejudice is a threat to its future. We want a better articulated democracy. We want never to suffer nor to show contempt for the humanity of our friends and neighbours. We have no fear and we have no hatred. We have no taint of blood.

We have no wish ever to govern the country on our own. We exist to prevent the perpetuation of single party governments. We want to end the winner-takes-all political reality which leads to desperation, panic and inhumanity. We want to end secret government and the devastating revelations when the truth finally comes out. We want to end the everlasting economic uncertainty and enforced ignorance of our own economic reality.

We will never be able to cost the opportunities lost in the feuding of the 1980s, in the euphoric miasma of the early 1990s, in the violent U-turns since the mid-1990s. We just want to end it and commit to a common basic strategy. We want neither Labour's plan nor the PN's allergy to planning. We want consensus on the basics to allow economic operators to get on with their lives.

We are a new phenomenon. We are Maltese and we are radical democrats. We have turned down the offer of a seat in Parliament because it would have been a violation of basic democratic principles though not of our laws. It would have made impossible the victory we have won for all true democrats in 2004.

We are a reaction to our nation's history. We know that the injured will never forget. We want to prevent any further scars: no more sequential dictatorships disguised in the subsistence democracy of mere majority rule. We want protection and respect for all minorities which is a guarantee of the rights of all of us.

Last Saturday the Greens launched a major restructuring and listening exercise. We are reaching out to all those who agree that we cannot afford to allow the past to renew itself in our future. We are setting up the structures needed to service a support base of many thousands. We are listening and listening and passing on ownership of our message to those who are realising that it has been theirs for much longer than they thought.

We are also preparing to carry on regardless of the Jurassic democratic values of our rivals. We have succeeded against impossible odds and we will continue to build on our success until they realise that hiding behind an undemocratic electoral system and their media bastions is simply useless against a population that demands a quality future.

Both the PN and the MLP are in the position of the MLP administration before the 1987 election. In granting 9.33 per cent support to a third party in 2004, the Maltese have spoken as clearly as they did when they gave the PN their first absolute majority in 1981. Both the other parties know it. They are presently in denial in the same way that some MLP leaders resisted majority rule in 1987.

The wall is down and Greens and friends are walking through. The PN and the MLP must now choose whether or not to amend the electoral system. The Greens will make it anyway, the PN and the MLP can concede and claim some merit or be defeated by democracy and suffer the taint forever. Even Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici's government avoided that.

Dr Vassallo is chairman of Alternattiva Demokratika - The Green Party.

harry.vassallo@alternattiva.org.mt