Coalition governments (2)

I refer to Angelo Micallef's letter The Blackmail System (August 17) in reply to Arnold Cassola.

Mr Micallef chose to deal with the question of a possible coalition government involving Alternattiva Demokratika in a rather superficial manner.

Any arrangement for a coalition would naturally be determined on a previously agreed political programme. I would expect the majority party to carry out the bulk of its manifesto with the agreed cooperation of AD. It is only in areas where an agreement has been reached beforehand that the government would be obliged to accommodate the policies of AD as the junior partner.

I do not see any danger of the instability Mr Micallef is so preoccupied with. We know from our bitter experience of the two major parties, the truism that "absolute power corrupts absolutely". Divided as we are into two irreconcilable tribes, a coalition government may be the only solution to diffuse the intensity of our mutually occurring repulsion of the red and the blue.

If the instability that Mr Micallef fears comes to pass, it will certainly not be advantageous to AD - AD will only gain from stability, good governance and the reining in of the excesses and arrogance we have so meekly come to accept.

I suggest that the onus will be on AD to put the cards on the table and declare in good time, before any election fever sets in, the minimum conditions acceptable to them in return for their support of one or the other of the two major parties.

Such a pact would, as Prof. Cassola rightly put it, confer on the Maltese electorate a right to choose between the totally divergent MLP and PN and a moderate coalition.