A little matter of corrupt practices

Malta comme­morates in a big way. Despite widespread criticism, we still celebrate five national days. We commemorate every United Nations Day and any date deemed to be of interest for whatever event happened in Malta or abroad. The government does not fail to commemorate days of significance to the party underlying it.

It is not a little strange, therefore, that the authorities have not spoken up on an event that took place 50 years ago this week. It was not of little significance, having to do with the core of democracy, holding general elections.

In 1958, Malta was still a colony. Up to the spring of that year, the Labour government was in office with a very clear votes-and-seats majority, after a series of weak governments involving the Nationalists. Prime Minister Dom Mintoff fell out with the British colonial masters and they responded by suspending the Constitution.

For four years, Malta was under direct colonial rule. Eventually, the British government consented to fresh elections being held in Malta. The right to self-government was restored, paving the way for constitutional change.

The Nationalist Party came out tops in the election.

Surely, 50 years on, that double event merits commemorating by the present Nationalist government. Yet, not a whisper about it. For those of us who lived those days, or others who have read historical accounts, the reason for such loud silence is easy to discern.

The 1962 general election was not free. It was a travesty of democracy. The British government permitted the bishops of Malta and Gozo to run it under corrupt practices prohibited in any true democracy. The bishops had already inflicted the interdict on the members of the executive of the Malta Labour Party, there­by denying them from receiving the sacraments.

The reason was that Archbishop Michael Gonzi believed that Mr Mintoff’s declaration that the MLP would accept aid from all quarters in the struggle for self-determination, provided it came without strings attached, made the MLP a fellow-traveller of Communism.

Not even the interdict was adequate, in the eyes of the Curia hierarchy, to ensure defeat of the MLP when the right to vote was restored. The bishops issued a pastoral letter whereby the faithful were extolled not to vote Labour, under pain of mortal sin if they did so.

Quite amazingly, both at the time and in distant retrospect, that mighty impediment to the MLP was still deemed to be not quite enough to keep it out of office. The Curia had encouraged the creation of two splinter parties, one from the Nationalist side – Herbert Ganado’s Democratic Nationalist Party – and one from the MLP – Toni Pellegrini’s Christian Workers’ Party. With them and two other small parties in play with the big Nationalist Party, the bishops strove to make doubly sure that every possible vote was mustered against Labour.

They created an umbrella under which the parties ranged against the MLP would direct their voters to apply the single transferable vote to all the candidates of all the parties under the umbrella. This made sure both that no vote went astray and also that no one gave any preference, low as it might be, to any Labour candidate.

The result was that, with 42 per cent of the votes, the Nationalist Party garnered 50 per cent of the seats. It was subsequently boosted in the Legislative Assembly when the late Coronato Attard crossed the floor. He left Ganado’s party, which was part of the opposition since the Nationalists had not offered their umbrella partners any coalition opportunity.

Those were dark years of shame. The elections were not free. They were held under the worst sanction of all in Catholic Malta, with the bishops aided and abetted by the British government. It is little wonder that today’s Nationalist government is not commemorating those events, based as they were on a repeat of the corrupt practices of the 1930s.

The Nationalist Party again shamelessly exploited them to gain office, doing the same when the black farce was repeated five years later, this time in independent Malta. I doubt that nowadays anyone within the PN dares to say s/he recalls that period with pride.