Changing politics

I firmly believe that these next five years are a golden opportunity for positive change in political life in Malta. The Maltese electorate has shown itself as a sophisticated body-politic in the messages it has sent to the parties in the last general election results. With the right conclusions drawn and acted upon, political life and public debate in Malta can develop immeasurably, and for the better.

A fortnight ago I wrote about the way Lawrence Gonzi has almost single-handedly won the general election for the Nationalist Party. With a lot going against it on many fronts, the PN has managed a feat no other party in Maltese political history has achieved. For the last 27 years, it has enjoyed majority support in general elections almost uninterruptedly and has shaped Malta as a European, modern, forward-looking nation. Even more importantly, it has changed Labour as well; the opposition party, even though belatedly and half-heartedly, has accepted the Nationalists' major reforms. The PN has thus dominated political life for a generation or more. That's quite an achievement.

But this doesn't mean that the PN can be smug. The general election result has resulted in a wafer-thin majority, the smallest in the last 57 years. Calculating the 2003 election result for the PN in terms of the 2008 electoral register, the PN got 11,000 less votes than it did five years ago. Thousands of potential PN voters ditched the party, even though they didn't embrace Labour.

The Nationalists need to understand better how deeply they have managed to change Malta in the last 20 years and how differently people do politics now that the PN has removed "existential" issues from the political centre-stage.

I believe the Nationalists need to keep rediscovering their proactive reforming zeal. The economy has been opened up, but that doesn't mean there's anywhere near enough competition. As rightly put forward by the PN in its manifesto, direct tax on initiative and work (that's what income tax is, after all) needs to be reduced. The government has to see whether social services launched ages ago are still reaching their original goals. They need to see, for example, whether the whole range of social services, however well-intentioned it might be, now has the unintended consequence of being an incentive for couples not to get married.

Efficiency in a leaner public sector is the best way to attack our deeply ingrained clientelar streak. More environmental functions need to be devolved to local councils that cannot just stagnate in their traffic-warden-wielding incarnation. The structure of public authorities needs to be re-evaluated lest they become unrepresentative, unaccountable and uncontrollable monsters that harass the ordinary citizen.

Our neutrality, passe' since at least the fall of the Berlin Wall 19 years ago, needs to be revisited. Our electoral system has to be simplified with less but bigger electoral divisions that are semi-permanent, and candidates contesting just one division, thus doing away with the silly practice of casual elections even before Parliament has convened.

Even as a party, the Nationalists need to adopt, even perhaps briefly, the frame of mind of an opposition party. The PN is essentially a national party, a broad church, welcoming and balancing diverse interests, a movement where Christian democrats, liberals, conservatives, greens and social democrats feel comfortable, a large house with rooms for all.

This is essentially why the Nationalist Party has, vote-wise, won six of the last seven general elections. But this does mean that the balancing act is more difficult for the PN than it is for Labour, with more potential to alienate its core vote but with a bigger need to attract people of different lifestyles. It also means that the PN has to recognise that there needs to be even more open debate within its ranks that seem to atrophy when the party is in government.

As for Labour, it has a lot to read in the latest general election result. By the calculation mentioned above for the Nationalists, Labour achieved exactly the same result it did last time, meaning that Labour has essentially been running on the spot for five years. Seeing Labour from the outside, I believe it has to change not just faces but also its behaviour as a negative, opposition-for-opposition's-sake party. And its hard-sell media treating viewers as imbeciles puts floaters off.

Which brings me to what I believe might make public and political debate in Malta massively better - the Constitutional provision for balance and impartiality in broadcasting to apply to all stations, not just to PBS. Rather than a party political broadcast, as some news bulletins have become, we would perhaps start approaching something that respects our intelligence as a modern, sophisticated electorate.

This is the last article in this fortnightly series, though I shall occasionally still be putting in my penny's worth in the healthy public debate that is The Times. Thanks for all your comments and encouragement.