Illusions of impotence

People produce politicians. They pose as leaders but in fact they are a product of the led. Every effort is made to hide this simple fact: political leaders are portrayed as the puppeteers controlling the strings of our destiny.

We always end up with the government we deserve. And then we mumble and grumble about it. Never before has it been so obvious that the puppets are the politicians. They are leaders only because they run faster than anybody else to keep ahead of the crowd.

The best joke is that the vast majority imagines itself to be helpless. It is learned helplessness. Only ordinary people decide in the end but at every encounter with the overwhelming virtual reality of television, they are sitting alone at home and the supposed puppeteers are dominating the scene, talking for thousands and appearing to hold the world in their palms.

They can change the world and we have little control on our private little lives.

It simply is not true. Only ordinary people vote in elections. When the politicians vote, they vote as people as ordinary as anyone else.

Not voting is a choice and it is nobody's business to interfere in whether we vote or not. In my view, it is almost always a very poor choice. If there was no AD candidate in my constituency I would still vote. We have a superb electoral system from the point of view of reward and punishment. It is not a matter of choosing one and leaving all the others guessing. We can tell each and every one of them what we think of them in relation to all the rest.

The few votes I have seen in the counting halls which exercise this right to the full remain a treasured memory. The vast majority restrict themselves to one party only. A few people know that they can cross the lines with impunity. They vote for all the parties, for all the candidates. Some Maltese voters are unaware that they are entitled to do so.

Even those of us publicly committed to a political party have the right to vote across party lines. Why should we do so? Because it allows us to choose among the candidates of the parties we do not like, sending to the bottom those of its candidates we like least and giving a leg up to others we dislike less.

In any case "our party" will have a surplus which it will not be able to employ in electing another candidate. If our vote worms its way into that surplus it will stop dead at that point unless we have exploited our voting power to the last possible drop by carrying on beyond the list of our nearest and dearest. It is wise to do so. If the "other side" wins the election at least you will have had your say in which of them gets to rule the roost. You will not have helped them to win, since you first did your utmost for the party of your choice.

The other thing is block-voting. It is insisted upon by the other political parties to prevent their faithful from crossing party lines before they have voted for all the anointed.

With three parties in the hustings, block-voting has begun to backfire very, very badly. It happened most clearly in the EP elections when Labour gained a third seat against all expectations simply because the significant surplus available after the elimination of the last PN candidate did not pass to AD. Louis Grech was the gainer, elected to the European Parliament on the strength of PN party discipline.

I can't say that I enjoyed it but there was a strong element of poetic justice there. Arnold Cassola with 23,000 No. 1 votes and well ahead at the start of the race was pipped at the post simply because Nationalist voters have been given the ingrained habit to vote for all their candidates and for no others, a habit that gave Labour an unexpected bonus.

Clearly AD has absolutely no right to expect those who are affiliated to another political party to support it in any way.

If Labour readers are smirking at all this, they are invited to sober up a little and realise that the same applies to them. Party regimentation is as much a menace to Labourites as to Nationalists. In many constituencies and particularly in the forthcoming local elections the boot is on the other foot. Using their votes cleverly is an option for Labourites too. Being unwise is their sacrosanct right also.

Green voters are in the enviable position of having complete freedom to express their preferences after voting the one or two Green candidates in the list. Their later preferences are eagerly awaited by the other candidates. Here there is no party putting out the flat lie that cross-party voting invalidates any vote (this deliberate deceit of one's own support has been documented). We encourage our supporters to express their preferences among other candidates. We are not called Alternattiva Demokratika for nothing, we are really something else in Maltese politics.

This is of even greater significance in local council elections where the party affiliation of candidates is often of secondary importance. It is a more personal affair and one can feel that candidates in other parties may serve the community better than some of the candidates in the exceedingly long list of one's own party.

Freest of all are those who have shed party affiliations or who were never burdened with any. They have the widest possible choice. Amazingly they are the ones most likely to give up on it altogether. If politics is the pits, why leave others to decide which government you deserve? At no other time do you have such an opportunity to tell politicians exactly what you think of them in numbers and in the way it hurts or helps most.

There was only one instance when I could understand why a voter deliberately stayed home. He had given a good part of his life as a militant in one party and wanted his name to appear in the list of non-voters because he knew it would be a shock to his crew when they came to scrutinise it. Most other people are unaware that such a list of names is compiled and given to political parties. Voting is secret but whether you vote or not is not a secret. Certainly not to the PN and the MLP who duly collect their lists from the Electoral Commission. AD has never done so.

In our view the Electoral Commission (on which we are still not represented) should be the only body entrusted with the verification process and its members bound by confidentiality. Either we trust them or we do not. The invasion of privacy, the coercive effect of the non-voter list in a country beset with clientelism and a fully-fledged back-scratching system is little short of a violence to people without political clout.

Until it is eliminated, complete secrecy of the vote is possible only by voting. That too is a fundamental right we should fight for. I would also fight to make local elections very local affairs and to explode the national party exploitation of the results. I would fight for the self-awareness of voters, their consciousness of their rights, their power and their responsibility. How much do we care? What is more important? The right to watch television in the illusion of political impotence?

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

www.alternattiva.org.mt www.adgozo.com.mt