At the end of every election campaign the last word is not said by Alternattiva Demokratika. In the final paroxysm of the campaign we will not be heard. That in itself is a pity. Quite apart from the disadvantage to the Greens, it speaks of a lack of fairness which is taken for granted, a failed or stunted political development. If we have something valid to say why should the electorate not hear it? If we have nothing worthwhile saying why not let voters judge us?
Voters, listeners and televiewers all will still judge the last word. It will also contain unintended messages which will be registered by the recipients. Not least of these is the unfairness of last-minute allegations which their victims cannot rebut. Many listeners may take them at face value but many others will be shocked not at the slur or the scandal but at the timing, the cowardice, the shameless unfairness. I hope that, after all the mudslinging in this election, there are enough of us who will decide to vote against it and any last minute character assassination will rebound on the would be assassins.
There is worse. This would not be the first electoral campaign in which lies are told about the voting system which has been in force since 1921. It is perfectly possible to vote for more than one party. Your vote will have the greatest possible effect in our system if you vote not only for all parties but for all candidates. If anyone says otherwise, say that you are voting for the Greens and see whether they want you to vote 2 or 3 for their party. They will not refuse that cross-party vote. Clearly, cross-party voting in any other way is perfectly valid also.
Far more people will vote AD in 2008 than those who voted in 2003. This time we are not sacrificing ourselves in favour of another party in order to put the lid on EU membership. Still, other partisans talk as though we should disappear to make way for their party. They seem stuck fast in the 2003 time warp when it was possible for us to be offered a seat in Parliament in order not to contest an election. We refused because we will sit in Parliament if and when we get there thanks to popular support. It's called democracy. Asking us to get out of the way because you are very, very big is not. It sounds like arrogance. That message also comes through.
Those who vote No. 1 AD do so with great determination. They are insulted when they are told that theirs is a protest vote. They vote Green because they understand the green democratic and environmental message. They want a third party in Parliament and not just any other party but one which has given ample proof of its commitment and of its ability to contribute to democratic debate. Insulting them does not help at all.
In 2004, 23,000 people voted Green. They have irreversibly changed this country's political history. They have made it clear that it is possible, regardless of the all the negative number crunching, to end the duopoly in Parliament. In a national election it takes just 2,500 votes in any one district to make the change complete, a break with the past 41 years of well-disguised serial dictatorships. Do we want to be or to seem European?
Very many more people will give the Greens a second or later preference. It is a very precious support. Without that cross-party voting, we will not be elected, just as the No. 2 votes will have no effect without a significant number of No. 1 votes to start with. It is an alliance of people with slightly different priorities which will get us into Parliament, people with a wide variety of reasons for supporting us. It is a situation we have experienced several times before in local council elections.
It is a support which is not clearly defined in us-and-them terms. It fully expresses our way of thinking. We have no enemies. We refuse to have enemies. We have people who support us and people who support us with even greater enthusiasm. Together we can change the 41-year course of this country's political history and put on its political agenda all those issues which have been sidelined in the interest of the other parties' electoral ambitions: the property situation, the environment, energy and transport, civil rights and institutional reform.
In Parliament we can contribute both our own expertise and that gained across Europe by other Green parties in dealing with the challenges of the future: preparing our economy to face the challenges of climate change. We can express the social development made by our own society and which is not reflected in the official version of things as mouthed by the political class.
We can give Maltese politics a new dynamic. No other political party can. The parties in Parliament can change the colour of the government but not the way it runs the country in relation to its financiers. No matter who rules alone, as long as that reality remains unchanged, nothing will change. Instead of the PN promoting the construction of high rises we do not need and the gobbling up of more countryside, it will be Labour.
The only substantial change that can take place is that of changing the political dynamic in our Parliament. All else follows from that. That is why I will vote Green on Saturday. At the end of it all, the last word uttered in the campaign is not really the last word. That belongs to voters who say it loudest in the quiet of the polling booth.
Dr Vassallo is chairman of Alternattiva Demokratika - the Green party.
www.alternattiva.org.mt, www.adgozo.com