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John Baldacchino and Kenneth Wain: Democracy Without Confession Philosophical conversations on the Maltese political imaginary. Allied Publications, 2013, 320 pp.

Alternattiva Demokratika’s performance in the 2013 elections was nothing for them to be ashamed of. The fact remains, however, that the main charge of the blessed 36,000 was into a rather better-trod valley.

Was this down to a coup by Joseph Muscat who, even as he lured old-school and not necessarily progressive Labourites back into the PL, somehow managed to rope in the ‘progressive and liberal’ elements in the floating vote who had previously been drawn to the Nationalist Party by the EU issue?

Or was it simply a matter of swallows migrating between two continents as they always have done in Malta? And if the former, what kind of price does Muscat stand to pay for making motley bedfellows out of ‘progressive’ and ‘inclusive’?

These are the kinds of questions to which Democracy Without Confession attempts to provide some profitable answers. The book consists of five dialogues, each of which subsumes a set of related topics.

The structure is loose and meandering; the authors describe it as more rhizome than road map. We are told that much of it was written in the course of email exchanges between Kenneth Wain in Malta and John Baldacchino, who at the time lived in New York.

Though much of its electronic-epistolary character was eventually edited out (there is no small talk or personal news, for example), the genre is reminiscent of works like Ocasião (AltaMira 2005), which was based on an email correspondence between an anthropologist living in California and a Portuguese aristocrat.

There is at least one way in which the book is a rare species. Baldacchino and Wain do their utmost to take their discussion beyond the staple models of localism, insularity, Mediterraneanism, and so on.

This may or may not explain some otherwise jaw-dropping omissions from the list of references. (Godfrey Baldacchino, Jeremy Boissevain, and Dominic Fenech, for example, are nowhere to be seen.)

As they put it, “a meaningful engagement with the Maltese political imaginary must begin with the rejection of identity politics. We were especially careful not to let discussions of location, history, language, or tradition become foundational for what we would subsequently say”. Clearly, the key word here is ‘foundational’.

Does it work? Yes and no. On the one hand the authors’ departure from a weary historical, geographical, and cultural essentialism is valiant and refreshing. At times it is also productive.

For example, the running reference to Lyotard’s notion of ‘performativity’ as a master narrative of the age that is applicable to the Maltese case (and which is dangerous because it is a hidden ideology that masquerades as technical-managerial) is spot on.

It’s a book that one keeps dipping into for inspiration

Certainly, it explains Alfred Sant’s stil maniġerjali and much subsequent triumphalist rhetoric on economic conquests.

Still, I was often left wondering whether I really needed helping upon helping of Habermas, Foucault, Rorty, and such sexiness in order to understand the events of Tal-Barrani or the divorce referendum.

This makes chunks of the book appear unnecessary and self-indulgent; the first part is particularly guilty in this respect.

I sometimes found myself missing some good old context-sensitive writing where place matters and time is of the essence.

The two main protagonists of the book are the Partit Laburista and the Partit Nazzjonalista. As expected, Baldacchino and Wain are under no illusions.

They make a culturalist argument for a strong tribalism, by which they mean two groups that have built and continue to actively maintain walls around themselves to protect their integrity from invasion by the other.

This means that the ranks were closed for each of the three big battles of post-Independence Malta: Mintoff’s trouble with the Church in the sixties, the 1981-87 confrontation between the two parties, and the divide over the EU referendum of 2003.

The duopoly is also a “veritable graveyard for small parties and small politicians who set themselves up independently, outside the PN/PL resolution”.

The bi-tribal deadlock lends itself to various interpretations. There are points at which Wain hints at a kind of template rooted in long-term historical and geographical circumstances.

By and large, however, there is nothing natural about the duo­poly.

It requires to be kept alive by means of two formidable life-support party machines that are obsessed with control.

Unregulated and fuzzy funds flow into the collection of person-by-person minutiae, the production of statistics, and a constant investment in media organisations bent on peddling party dogma.

There is, as it happens, some possibility of redemption. I loved Wain’s notion of the ‘pinnur of principle’, a type politely known as the ‘floating voter’.

They are the stuff that true democracy is made of, in many ways. First, the floater is situated outside the duopoly; second, they employ a healthy scepticism towards the rhetoric of both parties and hold their behaviour in permanent judgement.

Thirdly, they uphold more principles and values than the banalising image of the spinning weathervane would have us believe.

Happily, their presence in the Maltese political landscape is a growing reality.

It is not the only topic on which Baldacchino and Wain prove prescient.

They quite accurately forecast the present climate, in which hardly a day passes without some or other rainbow in the sky.

Although, what appears liberal may in part be an avatar of older anti-clerical currents, the confessional aspect of the Constitution seems increasingly to rub people the wrong way.

As Wain puts it: “These rumblings are still pretty muted but I would be very surprised if they were not to grow in years to come.” Amen to that Professor.

Democracy without confession is not an easy book to do justice to, or indeed to sum up.

Not surprisingly, given the intellectual solidity and breadth of its authors, its strongest selling point is the (breathless, at times) vivacity with which it moots a vast range of ideas.

It’s a book that one keeps dipping into for inspiration, a much-needed antidote to the hagiography and shameless politicking that take up so much bookshelf space in the ‘Maltese politics’ section.

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