Alex Ferguson, the Manchester United legendary manager who has just retired, classified the finest game pithily. “Football,” he said, “bloody hell!”
There is a dire need for a third voice in the House of Representatives
The same may be said about politics, a far deadlier game than football. Its twists and turns consistently justify former UK Conservative Prime Minister Harold Macmillan when asked what he feared most in politics. He replied: “events, dear boy, events.”
Events bring the unexpected. In the election of 2008, Labour was expected to win handsomely.
As Prime Minister, Alfred Sant would have been able to continue and fulfil his 1996 project when he was so rudely interrupted before it was barely one-third into its way.
A likely shoo-in a month before Election Day he was ironically tripped by Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando’s carefully-rehearsed tantrum and tears over his plot of land near Mistra Bay.
That spelled the end of Sant’s prime ministerial career, though the coming European Parliamentary elections will surely see him rise like the phoenix as an MEP elected with whopping majority backing.
As the heir of Eddie Fenech Adami, Lawrence Gonzi won his first election in 2008 with a handful of votes, barely 800 when you consider that a majority has to be halved to see the difference.
He deserved to be turned out. Then came along five years that saw him steer well in the midst of surrounding economic turbulence.
But events threw up lingering division and blood-letting in his party.
That, together with a cosy relationship with a few business cronies and Labour’s fine campaign, saw him turfed off on March 9, 2013. He lost by an overwhelming majority that denuded him of all dignity.
Doing the honourable thing, he made way for a new leader.
He now has to listen to his former followers effectively saying how bad the Nationalist Party had become under his leadership when, it is strongly implied, he had closed the door to all but a few chosen few.
“We have changed and the doors and our hearts, minds, headquarters and clubs are open once again,” new deputy leader, party affairs, Beppe Fenech Adami told PN councillors to loud applause (The Sunday Times of Malta, May 26).
Simon Busuttil had been a successful MEP building a strong career in Brussels from which he could catapult to vie for the leadership of the PN around 2018, assuming Gonzi won the 2013 election.
Events proved him wrong. Reading the writing on the wall, Gonzi asked Busuttil back to try to salvage the party from ruin.
The new Gonzi-Busuttil duo failed miserably. Gonzi was soon out. Busuttil strongly in.
Events also dealt a blow – a cruel blow – to Malta’s third party, Alternattiva Demokratika. In its 21st year, under the charismatic leadership of Michael Briguglio, it garnered its highest vote ever, topping 4,000. Yet Briguglio resigned.
There may have been back-biting in the background but he pegged his resignation on a wish to be able to enjoy his family and do his own thing.
Astonishingly it turns out that, so far, no one wants to take the top job. With the party at its peak, it may be disbanded.
Historian Dominic Fenech offered an erudite analysis as to why, going into the unorthodox way the single transferable vote system, meant by the wily British to encourage multi-party representation, works in Malta, where a definite bias towards a two-party system has existed since 1966 (The Sunday Times of Malta, May 26).
My own position is that it’s high time that the electoral system is radically changed to turn Malta and Gozo into a single constituency as is already the case in the European Parliament election.
There would, thus, be one national quota and a third party like AD would be more likely to elect at least one candidate. That would raise a key question: do we want the electoral system to fragment, whereby one or two candidates outside the mainstream could hold the key to a parliamentary majority?
The old fear regarding governability, I believe, is overused. Having a third party represented in government will not necessarily lead to instability.
One of the leading parties – as Labour has just shown – could still achieve an overall majority rather than a plurality that might necessitate a coalition.
There is a dire need for a third voice in the House of Representatives. As the Gonzi government showed and Joseph Muscat’s is showing, there is a tendency for leaders to try to ensure that their backbenches are no more than a choir singing from the government’s hymn sheet.
And as oppositions always show, despite the pretty words they might utter, as in the Busuttil-Muscat meeting at PN headquarters a week ago, the opposition of the day is largely negative and destructive.
A third voice could be more objective, as AD has shown in its short lifetime.