Our only political problem

For the past 18 years or so, being involved with AD meant being the Cassandra of Maltese politics: screaming warnings which went unheeded. In recent years we have gained the public's ear.

For many years, it suited our adversaries to treat us with contempt. All the issues which today have become mainstream following the adoption of the environmental acquis were treated as Green nonsense. Today our adversaries boast they are greener than grass. The cost has been phenomenal.

Long before the setting up of Alternattiva Demokratika, it had become clear to many of us that the key cause of all our troubles was the extreme bi-polar structure of Maltese politics. Addressing our environmental ills demands widespread cooperation: awareness and the internalisation of common values achieving as wide a consensus as possible. The zero-sum politics we have had so far is in direct contradiction to what we clearly need. Quite apart from environmental improvement, it was clear to us that our one abiding political problem was the political system itself and no other. One-party governments make accountability impossible. Where we need scrutiny mechanisms more efficient than those in other countries, ours are inevitably weaker.

Joining one side or another would not change a thing. Bringing about a change in government simply reversed the roles of government and opposition parties leaving the system itself utterly unaffected. The country went through endless turmoil through confrontation on every issue possible and imaginable but the main issue never made it into public debate. Few saw the menace in the two party system. It was no accident that we chose Alternattiva Demokratika for our party name. Not only did "green" have Maltese connotations of vindictiveness we did not deserve or desire, we aimed at changing the system itself, providing an alternative to two-party politics, zero-sum politics, the violently pathological politics of the past and now to the structurally violent politics of the present. As newcomers Greens face some form of structural violence in every country. In Malta we faced a system and a political culture that denies pluralism beyond the minimum. The 1987 amendments to the Constitution that assumed there would never be any political scenario other than a two-party system, express it best.

Until just yesterday nobody saw the need for a "third party". Not even the British with their weird voting system are as poor as we are in political diversity. Today the need for pluralism and accountability in politics is felt far beyond the confines of Green support.

Many have begun to understand that a small party positioned between the two giants inevitably produces a total change. More importantly, it is beginning to sink in that in such a circumstance the "third party" must inevitably be and remain the steadying influence, the moderator, the shock absorber between the other two. The guarantee to the electorate that a third party will not hold the country to ransom or act capriciously is not a question of the character or personality of its leader nor of the whims of its executive committee. It is in the nature of things.

In order to drive in the thin end of the wedge and to establish a permanent presence between the other two parties, there can be no question of irresponsible politics: the electoral punishment for caprice is total elimination at the next round. It has also become clear that the Green Party is capable of addressing complex issues, taking on challenges which the other parties will not touch; of placing on the country's agenda issues which have been neglected for decades until they fester and distort everything they touch.

No political party aiming at an absolute majority in the polls can afford to take on issues which may alienate the slightest sliver of support. Electoral calculation makes nonsense of any sacred principle. The majoritarian, two party system binds our adversaries to the lowest possible form of lowest common factor politics, most of the time an insult to the intelligence of the vast majority. The partisan hysteria engendered by a system in which winner-takes-all means a complete change in the power structure and the exclusion of the currently dominant client/patron network does not make for dispassionate discussion of issues on their merits.

The money side is the best illustration because it leads to all the other less tangible costs. Our rivals spend about Lm500,000 in each electoral campaign. Their insatiable media empires probably cost far more between elections. The idea that this expense is covered by membership subscriptions or the Christmas fundraising bonanzas is a joke in very poor taste.

Evidence of the link between our adversaries and their financiers lies all over the country, in every street and on every hill. It has uglified the country beyond recognition through the expense of billions of liri in construction with almost no evidence of a planning regulator. There is no law regulating the financing of political parties. Nothing to speak of.

Nor do we have a respectable Freedom of Information Act, no Whistleblower Act. The broadcasting regulation prescribed by the Constitution is a cruel joke. Dissidence is not suppressed, it is institutionally aborted. Our electoral system, regulated by our adversaries alone, ensures that nothing changes.

People facing financial ruin because of a struggling economy, people fearing for their jobs or seeking one, have little time for all this. They want bread and they want it now. I can hardly blame them. Bread today and concentrating only on bread today means that there will be less bread tomorrow. We are eating our seed corn, destroying our future earning potential through blatantly unsustainable development made inevitable by a political structure that feeds on the disease it is meant to cure. We feel the pain and scream but do nothing to cure the cancer.

Not voting does not reduce the pain. Shrugging off the antics of politicians will not make them stop. Demanding administration by technocrats because politicians are incompetent does not begin to scratch the surface of the problem. It will not happen because there is too much money at stake for those dependant on the status quo.

The Green answer is to drive a wedge between the other two parties to necessitate their relaxation of the stranglehold they have on every sector of our economic, social and cultural lives. We do not promise heaven on earth. We can promise a complete change, a new beginning in thought and action untrammelled by the obsessions of party politics. We can promise an end of the Middle Ages in Malta, the beginning of the end of client/patron networks. We can promise an effective space for civil society, constant, consistent and authentic consultation. We can promise a space for our stunted and silent intelligentsia if they still crave for it. We can promise an equality of rights which we do not currently enjoy; respect for citizens as citizens not as clients nor as party financiers. We can promise never to be or to become a totalising political party and to prevent the others from becoming such once more.

It is our raison d'être. Only we can promise these things. We can promise but only voters can bring them about.

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

harry.vassallo@alternattiva.org.mt