Is this a general election where a gun is being held to some voters' heads? Speaking as someone who once walked under the stars with a youth pointing a real gun to my temple, I would say it is not quite like that.
All the coalition talk boils down to two questions. Is a coalition good or bad for Malta? Can a coalition actually be willed into being by playing the electoral system like a game?
The first question asks about desirability. The answer can be deeply personal. The second asks about what can work: Can one game the system to bring about the result one wants? A good answer will be as impersonal as good analysis of any game.
Last week, this column restricted itself to answering the question: Is it good game analysis to think the Nationalist Party (PN) would prefer a coalition with Alternattiva Demokratika (AD) to opposition? I am only interested in what works.
It is worth expanding on the analysis because some readers are still not convinced that Lawrence Gonzi would prefer opposition. Yes, he has explicitly ruled coalition out - but surely he is bluffing?
Let us begin a step before that. If you are going to game any system, you need to get the maths right. It is highly improbable that Dr Gonzi will find himself needing to decide whether to enter a coalition with AD.
The district boundaries and the 2008 electoral mood are such that the Malta Labour Party (MLP) can win some three current PN seats with less than 50 per cent of the vote. If a third party wins a seat, it will be a current PN seat, not an MLP one.
Good or bad? That is up to you. But this is the game. In fact, the game is such that this further possibility exists: the PN can win 49 per cent, the MLP 48 per cent and AD three per cent (plus a seat) - and the MLP could still find itself governing alone. A combined PN-AD tally of 51 per cent of the vote does not guarantee a parliamentary majority. If you remember, we have been here before.
Does this mean one should not try anyway? That is up to you. But since it is a long shot, it will be a gamble. Think of what - for you - would be the worst-case scenario and decide if you can live with it.
But suppose Lawrence Gonzi does find himself in a position where he needs to decide whether to enter a coalition with AD. Would he, even if he has ruled it out during the campaign?
AD suggests that, as a game player, Dr Gonzi will want to remain in government. Some bloggers suggest that Dr Gonzi would not hand power to Alfred Sant if he is sincere in thinking that a Sant government would not be good for Malta.
Not having access to Dr Gonzi's secret thoughts, we can only evaluate what his moves might be by taking two scenarios in turn.
The first scenario assumes that Dr Gonzi is, above all, a calculating, cynical player. On this scenario, contrary to what Harry Vassallo implies, the chess game does not end the day the electoral results come in. It goes on. A hypothetically cynical Dr Gonzi would have every interest to refuse a coalition with AD.
Why? Because then AD can only enter a coalition with the MLP. In which case, its formerly PN voters will flock back to the PN the next day. Given the tension between the key, anti-ecological pledges Dr Sant has made and AD's strong criticisms of those pledges, it is unlikely that the coalition would last a full legislature.
All this assumes that Dr Gonzi thinks of politics purely as a game. If he does not, there is a second scenario. Here, a principled Dr Gonzi decides that if he has won fewer seats than the MLP, then he has lost and accepts the result.
Besides, he would reason - as he has loudly done in public - that the electoral strategy pursued by AD, based on targeting PN seats and harsh criticism of his government, has made political cohabitation impossible in 2008.
We do not need to limit ourselves to these two scenarios. The truth probably lies somewhere in between these two extremes and Dr Gonzi is perhaps both principled and calculating. But in this case, the anti-coalition reasoning would be doubly reinforced.
Against this kind of scenario, it is really beside the point for AD to insist that it is trustworthy. Perhaps it is. But the real issue is not whether it is trustworthy but whether Dr Gonzi trusts it. He may well think that government with people he deeply distrusts is as undesirable for Malta, and certainly for him, as a Sant government.
Let us remember that, elsewhere in Europe, parties with a coalition strategy do not target the seats of the party they want to form a coalition with. Of course, they are adversaries but they are not enemies, which is what you are when you target a party's marginal seats. In the UK, in the mid-1970s and again in 1997, the Liberal Democrats targeted Conservative seats when they wanted a coalition with Labour. In France, the centrists targeted Socialist seats when they informally allied themselves with the Gaullists; and when their leader, Francois Bayrou, began to target Nicolas Sarkozy, the informal coalition broke down.
In Malta, AD has tried to defy the political law of gravity. It thinks it can be a bitter enemy during the campaign and a coalition partner afterwards. Not even in Germany does this quite happen: the current national government between the Christian Democrats and the Social Democrats was formed at a price - Gerhard Schroeder's political head; the offensive way he behaved during the campaign (and when the result came in) made a coalition with him impossible. And even that coalition was formed in the knowledge that, if the country went quickly to the polls again, the two major parties would both lose votes.
Is it a pity that, in the Maltese circumstances of 2008, a PN-AD coalition government is highly unlikely? Perhaps. Should one try, nonetheless, to make the game fit one's noble wishes? That is up to you. But at that point you would have stopped playing football and started dabbling in fantasy football.
ranierfsadni@europe.com