Political parties and their mystique

Earlier this week, I conducted an evening University class on politics. Using a technique developed by Edward de Bono, we plotted out, in diagrammatic form, the class's collective perception of Maltese politics. The result was, at once, familiar and interesting.

By far the most detailed and dominant was politics run by the party machines in the scramble for votes. The machine, according to the perception, was oiled by clientelism.

Completely disconnected from the flow diagram connecting clientelism, the party-saturated media and vote hunting, were two other, rather minor flow diagrams.

One of them acknowledged that "politics" was inescapable even for those who did not care for it. One's quality of life, it was recognised, turned on the right policies, and politics. At the same time, economic choices by voters could shut off certain policies as out of bounds.

The third diagram dealt with vision and "people power" - the power to effect real constructive change. It was a somewhat shrivelled diagram compared with the one dealing with the party machines.

These were not analytical diagrams. They mapped perceptions. Their interest lies not in what they analysed right but in what they registered on the empowerment scale going from hopefulness to helplessness.

The class was made up of mature students with day jobs. Some of them were studying to enrich their contributions at work; others to move elsewhere if they could; others for study's own sake. In other words, people who in their everyday lives are ready to take the initiative, reflect creatively and see what they are doing as part of a larger life-project.

It is all the more striking, therefore, to note what the diagrams showed. First, there is the fragmentation of the diagrams into three. Just how the work of the political machines fits in with empowerment, on the one hand, and economy, on the other, was not apparent to the class. The political machines appeared to have a life of their own, dominating the rest of what went on.

Second, there is the sense of helplessness or fatalism. The class was certainly aware that one cannot have clientelism without clients. Equally, it acknowledged other kinds of popular participation that oiled the political machine. And yet it was perceived as participation "despite oneself" - a perception made clear in how politics-as-empowerment was completely disconnected from how the political parties operated.

The third striking aspect about the diagram is more arguable. I believe that the class perceptions are representative of a much broader public. But I also believe that, in some crucial ways, the perceptions do not correspond to reality.

Take the helplessness, for example. What strikes me about the last three and half years of EU membership is how far we have travelled, and how fast. It is usual to complain about how little progress has been made to get EU help to address the pressures of irregular immigration. But is that really so?

In 2004, the EU barely acknowledged that irregular immigration was an issue to which the principle of solidarity applied. By summer 2006, that principle was accepted, and the issue had shifted to challenging our fellow members to live up to the principle. In a mere 24 months, we had persuaded 24 member states. Not bad.

The same can be said for the environment and transparent party funding. Not nearly enough has been done on the first, and we have only had talk about the second. But the environment is now a key electoral issue, which could decide (and this is surely new) the victor of the next general election. And the pressure to make progress on funding is unlikely to go into remission.

That is dramatic political climate change over a three-year period. And it did not happen because Brussels forced us into anything. Popular pressure and demands feature in important ways in all three shifts. EU rules of good governance feature as well, but those were rules chosen through a popular referendum.

If I am right that ordinary voters are not as helpless as many of them think, and that they have already been effecting important change, then what accounts for the widespread (as I think it is) feeling of relative helplessness?

It would be a mistake to search for only one reason, or only for Malta-centred reasons. Voter perceptions of helplessness feature in Euro-American politics more widely. It is related to the split between the impersonal rules of international governance and personalised national politics.

But we should think about what there is in the conduct of Maltese politics that enables the political parties to project themselves as more powerful, more dominant, more inescapable than they really are (even if their real power is considerable).

Because if I am right in thinking that they are less powerful than they appear to be to most of us, then their mystique of power is not just image. It is part of their weaponry. And the sooner they are disarmed of it, the sooner ordinary voters can think more clearly about how their hopes for emancipation tie in with party politics and political vision.

Come to think of it, perhaps the sooner political parties are disarmed of this particular weapon, the sooner they can liberate themselves of voter cynicism.

ranierfsadni@europe.com