A new Parliament

There is nothing more obvious than the fact that we need a new Parliament. Not a new Parliament building but a new Parliament. The country desperately needs to feel that it is effectively represented in its legislature, that Parliament is effective.

The last thing that the country needs to see at this time is the expenditure of Lm22 million on a grandiose building to house our MPs. My guess is that the government has proposed this nonsense as a smokescreen. The PM's inexplicable passion for golf is another. It draws attention away from far more serious matters.

If the government truly wanted to enhance the status of the country's Parliament it would start by securing the basics - its composition. Electoral reform would not cost the country a cent. Why do we not see to the basics first?

Ever since the 1992 election the presence of the Green Party has made it necessary to review the ramshackle arrangements of our electoral laws. The Gonzi commission was called to address the issue left wide open in the 1987 amendments to the Constitution whereby it was agreed that any party gaining an absolute majority of the vote would be assured of a majority of seats in Parliament. The Greens' 1.7 per cent result in the 1992 election exposed the shortsightedness of the reform: The 1987 patchwork came within a whisker of being defeated in 1992 if neither of the other parties passed the 50 per cent mark.

After months of wrangling and consultation, the Gonzi commission reported its failure. It had come within sight of success. Above all it had shown that all political parties recognised the need to reduce the threshold for newcomers from the present absurd 16.6 per cent. They disagreed on how it should be done.

The failure of the Gonzi commission meant that the other two parties were bound to address the basic issue of majority rule alone. They amended the law to ensure that, if neither of them attained an absolute majority of the vote because of the fraction of votes polled by an unelected third party, the one with a relative majority would be assigned a majority of seats in Parliament. It was yet another patch on the worn inner tube of Maltese democracy.

The result was a change in government in 1996 producing a fragile Labour government. It heaped further systemic prejudice on the universally acknowledged obstacles facing the Greens. Nothing changed for the early election called in 1998 nor for the 2003 election. The Greens appeared to be in decline reaching their nadir with 0.7 per cent in 2003.

The European elections of 2004 told another story. With 9.3 per cent of the vote, the Green Party made the most spectacular leap forward of any party contesting the election across the continent - a gain of well over 1,000 per cent. It became the fifth largest Green Party in Europe, probably anywhere in the world. Neither of its rivals gained a single vote on their previous results. Both made serious losses.

It is clear that Malta has lived a massive political lie. Its people are more than capable of going beyond minimal pluralism and zero sum politics. Only the acknowledged failure of the electoral system has prevented a full expression of the popular will before. Only the political myopia of our rivals prevents a full articulation of democracy in Malta.

A new Parliament building will be a massive whitewashed sepulchre of our parliamentary democracy. Designing such a building in the knowledge that it will house a massive lie, a defeat of democratic principles, will be a recipe for disaster. Should we spend Lm22 million on such a sham?

A government that has not had the decency to respond to requests for discussion on the reform of the electoral system should not make plans to build a new Parliament. It would be the equivalent of Ceausescu's Presidential Palace - a massive lie. Dr Gonzi's government does not have the democratic credentials to design the Parliament building of the future.

In 1985 I was commissioned by Hielsa, a secretive human rights organisation, to compile a human rights report for Malta up to 1984. In documenting the horror, what oppressed me most was not the imbecility of the violations nor the outrage of the victims, it was the silence of the partisans of the oppressor: of Labourites. Most of them were decent people who wouldn't hurt a fly. They were being made to bear a burden they did not deserve. They were taking it on by keeping mum.

Today many of them are keen to concede that it was a culpable folly. They could have prevented it by speaking out, by being more Maltese than Labourite. They cannot go back and unravel history. They will bear the taint forever.

Today thousands of Nationalists recognise that the Green Party has a valuable contribution to make to the country. They know that Greens face virtually insurmountable hurdles which do not affect the other parties; a prejudicial electoral system and a broadcasting regime that leaves them in a worse position than the PN in the 1980s. They know that virtually one out of every 10 Maltese voters is cheated of representation in his or her country's Parliament in the manner they would prefer. Nationalists have become the silent Labourites of yesteryear.

The fact that there are no bombs exploding, no party clubs being burnt, no thugs roaming the streets and no armed policemen shooting innocent bystanders or torturing their prisoners stands to the credit also of Greens who voted for change in 1987. The fact that there is no political unrest in spite of the 15 years of oppression suffered by Greens is to the merit of the Greens alone. We are the only Maltese political party committed by statute to non-violence and have a 15-year track record to prove it. We learnt the lessons of the past better than anyone else. Which of our rivals would have anything like it to boast of, if it were exposed to a fraction of what has been inflicted upon us?

The silence of the Nationalists is a far greater burden to bear than many can imagine. The silent Labourites of yesteryear faced the almost impossible challenge to become "traitors" to their party at a time of political violence. What do Nationalists face? They are decent people who wouldn't hurt a fly also. Much less is asked of them and still they keep silent. They maintain a system of permanent undemocracy simply by turning away from the reality that they cannot but acknowledge.

This too is a time to stand up and be counted. Not as a Nationalist, a Labourite or a Green but as a democrat. It is a challenge to all of us but especially so to Nationalists who inevitably have greater leverage. There is no need to become Green, only to shed the burden of oppressing them simply by speaking out, to be convinced that one's rights are best safeguarded by safeguarding the rights of others and to act on that conviction. It is a lesson we should all have learnt in the 1980s. It is an authentically European stance.

Today the Prime Minister will put his hand to the new European constitution which grants Malta and the Maltese disproportionate representation in the EU's institutions in recognition of the national sovereignty we have chosen to share with other member states. It is a bitter irony that the same Prime Minister whose name adheres to the Gonzi commission report, which first documented our domestic structural undemocracy, prefers to build a very expensive sham rather than to secure basic proportional representation to all Maltese voters. Perhaps it is no accident that he has opted for the Royal Opera House site: He appears to have more regard for histrionics than for history.

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

harry.vassallo@alternattiva.org.mt