My counterparts in the other political parties are gearing up for the great bread and circuses exercise preceding every general election. They have a gargantuan task ahead of them this time.

Never before have they faced start up from such a low ebb in credibility. The occasional sycophantic letter to the editor is greeted with private derision at breakfast tables all over the country. Hymns to the glory and greatness of political leaders sound more ludicrous than ever.

The idea that the greatest body of opinion in the country is a coalition of people who have shaken off allegiance to the two political parties represented in Parliament is completely novel to Malta. It is a sign of the disillusion, the disappointment verging on disgust with the status quo.

There is a high probability that the next government will be a single party government. It is a matter taken for granted by almost the whole country. We will have either yet another PN government or another MLP government. Although both the other parties combine to reinforce this assumption in every possible way, it is the principal cause of our malaise.

We know that nothing will change either way. Whatever they may do or say, the most significant fraction of the population does not associate either of the options presented to it as attractive or even welcome. Who wants to swap one client/patron network for another? Who can stomach an extension of political feudalism propelled into the third millennium? What happened to consultation and subsidiarity? Meritocracy? Rights not favours? We have heard it all before and we are not inclined to give it another hearing.

And, yet, even among those who know they are fed up, the idea that there may be a way out of the dilemma presented by the two other parties does not come quickly to mind. Much of the anger and resentment is caused by the belief that we will eventually be bullied into supporting one side against the other simply because "the other side is worse".

One encouraging glimmer in the gloom is the increasing talk of the third party. For those of us who embraced this project as far back as 1989, times have never been better. Today we hear complaints that we are not doing enough, that we are not sufficiently vociferous, that we should do this or do that. The Green periphery appears to have extended beyond our horizon. It has never been this way before. The complaints indicate a strong and widespread desire for us to be, to become and to be seen to be a realistic threat to the asphyxiating prospect of a common future just like our common past.

In all these years our commitment against all odds was to survive, to keep the hope alive that Maltese politics can be changed. In that we have succeeded but the climb has been such that very few would be tempted to follow in our footsteps, starting from scratch. Today we are on the brink of success. We know it and it should be clear to everyone.

It is not. We are the heresy challenging the depressing dogma of Maltese politics. At first we were ignored, then we were attacked, now our adversaries are making our creed their own. They look pretty funny pretending to be Green: bending over backwards to pacify the hunters while defending animal rights, claiming environmental kudos while exposing more swathes of the countryside to speculators' greed, gabbling about alternative energy when they were the ones to avoid it like the plague for decades. Who wants pathetic fakes when the real thing is available?

They have made our politics mainstream and made its core values strike a chord with a far greater segment of the population than we could ever have hoped for. Only yesterday we were unable to campaign about cleaner air because we would have sounded too detached from our political context. Today the country knows that we have 35 per cent of the population under 16 suffering from asthma or allergies. Can we really believe that the people who let it grow on us can seriously address it?

What is it that they can address? Every serious issue is left until it is impossible to procrastinate further; pensions, the public health sector, even the economy was run into the ground until the feel-good factor era became an insane luxury we could not afford. The classic of course is the paralysis over rent reform. The very stones laugh at a government that is impaled on the horns of a dilemma prodded on the one hand by the blatant injustice of the law and on the other hand by its obscene fear of electoral whiplash. What happened to Austin Gatt's five-seat majority that allows his party untrammelled sway over all others?

The ground is fertile for change. What will it take? In spite of the favourable conditions it is unlikely that we will be able to unleash the full potential for change, the groundswell of informed reform-seekers is not likely to be found as long as we are politely but effectively locked out of the media. We must be elected to Parliament before it can take place.

What remains is to select a small number of targets out of the 13 elections which make up a general election. If we can match the competition on the ground in just a few areas there should be no question about us being able to elect MPs.

It is a matter of time and money, energy and then more energy. In the process we will need support. Nobody who recognises the crying need for a third party to unleash this country's potential should stand back. There may never be an opportunity for change as good as the present. Miss it this time and you will go back to thoughts of emigration.

And there is very little time left. There certainly is no time to be locked in the past and less for the luxury of being pessimistic. If Malta does not break out of its political deadlock in a few months time it is doomed to procrastinate and to procrastinate until change is dictated by economic and external factors. Do we need to hit bottom before we reach out for a decent future?

We have tremendous unrealised potential. All we have to do to begin to benefit fully from it is to put the two-party system behind us once and for all, to put politics to the service of the people and stop allowing it to dominate all our lives.

Try working backwards from a scenario in which at least three parties sit in our Parliament, none of them forming an unaccountable, untransparent one party government. All of them are seeking out alliances fully aware that they must work together to work at all. How did we get there? It was a matter of putting in a small effort to achieve it just now, a few months ahead of the election.

Now imagine that you did nothing. You have yet another PN government. An MLP government? In neither case is it the end of the world. It is just what we have now, what we have had for decades: zero sum politics. Are you wild with excitement or are you thinking of emigration again?

I have always believed in Malta and in the Maltese. Today we are facing a great historical moment. This is where we decide that we do not merely want to survive as we have always done but to thrive, to compete and to compete successfully; to play our part to the full and to exploit to the very last the enormous privilege of our statehood. We can either jettison the ballast of our antiquated political system or hang onto it and risk sinking. It will be our choice and our choice alone.

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

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