Indifference and apathy are usually supposed to be friends of inertia. However, sometimes they have a kick. The paradox is well illustrated by Malta's reactivated application to join the Partnership for Peace (PfP).
An appraisal that the wide public is indifferent to PfP almost certainly guided the government to act the way it did: to re-apply before Parliament had reconvened and without signalling its intention in the Nationalist Party electoral programme.
Yes, I know some commentators have said that the government should never have acted the way it did because the country is divided over the issue. But that conflates party policies with grassroots support. It is the two parties of government that are divided: Most of their respective supporters, I wager, do not care one way or the other. Those who do care for the most part have a special involvement in either politics, or the commentariat, or the protestariat.
To observe this is not to say the government was right to proceed the way it did. But the observation does change one's understanding of the government's action. Several of its senior officials are genuinely baffled by charges of undemocratic action and arrogance.
Undemocratic? That means riding roughshod over the popular will: but there is no real discernible articulate popular will on this issue. Arrogance? The government has not arrogated anything to itself, the deputy Prime Minister has objected, but simply taken an operational decision on an issue where it already knew the Opposition was bound to disagree given its policy declarations; otherwise the government is open to discussion over the content of Malta's participation in PfP (which is up to Malta to decide).
Well, yes. But democracy is also about right process and an institutionalised habit of debate. Break the habitual pattern often enough and you end up undermining democratic practice. We need to be vigilant.
Besides, the governing party did arrogate to itself the right to decide alone what counts as an issue to be debated. Included in the PN electoral programme, PfP membership would not have, directly, swayed votes; but it might have deflected valuable campaign time from issues that the PN wanted to focus on. Which is why, I guess, it stayed out.
After the election came the government's swift action, with no waiting for Parliament to reconvene. In some conversations I have had, this was explained as a race to get one's application in before Cyprus did. The latter is known to be interested in applying soon; for all the usual reasons it may be blocked by Turkey, a Nato member; and Malta wanted to avoid its application being caught in the paper jam. However, in last Tuesday's edition of Dissett, the deputy Prime Minister, Tonio Borg, denied this had been a major consideration.
What this denial suggests is that it was the government's appraisal of the public's indifference that directed the choice of process. But that choice misjudged two things.
First, the public is not indifferent to being taken for granted about what should be debated. As a result, the government's style is now being eyed warily, again, as it was before the general election, undoing some of the goodwill gained by the formation of the new Cabinet.
Second, the government did not pay sufficient attention to what public indifference means for the MLP. The PN can live with sniping hostility to its flatly pro-PfP stance - but that is because all the snipers are shooting from outside. In the MLP's case, however, the shooters operate from within and can be more lethal.
The dynamic of indifference thus operates in a way that hampers rather than favours the executive. Here, a potential majority of MLP supporters who may be indifferent or passively favourable to PfP membership are not organised enough to shout down a militant vocal minority, dead set against PfP.
Such a minority could also make it very difficult for party leaders to agree on changes or updates in the Constitution's provisions on neutrality.
When the MLP's acting leader, Charles Mangion, announced that the party may be open to discussions on such constitutional changes, he also insisted on a process based on respect.
What I hear him say is that the party's leaders cannot afford to be depicted, by a faction within the party, as having been steamrollered.
Dr Borg has said that the government is "all ears" to what the Opposition has to say about constitutional change. So presumably it has heard Dr Mangion clearly: If the discussion process does not ostentatiously recognise the MLP's dignity, then the discussion itself does not have much hope of being constructive.
ranierfsadni@europe.com