One thing that I really hate in Maltese politics is the way political discourse is still, to a large extent, monopolised by the two major political parties. While it is true that the advent of social media has helped towards democratising political discourse, the situation still leaves much to be desired.
If one considers radio and television as an example, it is obvious that the space afforded to ordinary citizens to participate is many times limited to phoning in during discussion programmes. Such ‘participation’, limited to only a couple of minutes at most, is not a satisfactory way for ordinary citizens to make their voice heard.
Indeed, some local media situations are really ridiculous. I find it incredible that many important national issues have been discussed on a Friday night television talk show where the major political parties send their hand-picked representatives on the panel and a number of supporters among the audience. In other words, everything is manipulated by the major stakeholders beforehand.
Similarly objectionable is the practice by which a limited pool of opinionists are invited to various media fora. There have been cases where a particular opinionist receives an invitation to speak three times within a few hours on different TV and radio channels and always on the same political topic. This is usually the result of the opinionist having been ‘recommended’ by a particular political party. Such a situation is very common in Malta and it is highly undesirable as this means that the public is receiving the opinion of the same person over and over again.
Some individuals seem to be experts on everything because you will find them giving their opinion on every subject under the sun. This is as ludicrous as it is pathetic because it means that we are devaluing the opinion of so many others who might be more qualified to voice their opinion on a political topic and perhaps even more articulate in explaining their opinion to the public.
We need open political parties. Closed and secretive political parties are not democratic
Even more important is the issue of what should be discussed internally within a political party and what should be made public knowledge. I fully concur with the opinion that matters of strategy should always be discussed internally. This is simple common sense. However, that is where I stop at internal discussion within the party, excluding, of course, matters where one has a moral obligation to respect the confidentiality of the persons involved.
One’s point of departure should always be that political parties belong to the public. They do not belong to the party administration, to the national executive of the party or the party delegates. The major political parties often attack each other by saying that the opposing party has been hijacked by a group of individuals, a clique, which uses the party apparatus for its own ends.
While much of this is usually exaggeration, the possibility cannot be discounted when political parties become secretive about everything.
I have always been of the opinion that every party member should be allowed total freedom of expression. As I said before, a political party belongs to the people, therefore public matters should be publicly discussed.Otherwise, the criticism that political parties today represent only the views of the people who lead them will become a reality.
Finally, democratising political discourse implies democratising even latent messages disseminated by the political parties. The most important of these involves being fair to all the candidates of a party. Why do I say this? Because I think that it is very unfair to have a group of candidates representing a particular political party and then to have the same party subtly pushing forward one particular candidate to the detriment of the other competing candidates.
One really irritating aspect of this is when a political party’s discourse imparts the message that it is some kind of achievement when younger candidates are elected. This is a blatant insult to candidates of a more mature age who sometimes have a record of decades of sacrifice and hard work for the party. Indeed, I find it incredible that today everybody speaks about the concept of “active aging” and then we sometimes present it as something to boast of if a high percentage of elected candidates are youths.
The people at the top should ensure that access to fora,where one can influence national events, should be made open to more people, especially valid individuals who can give an informed opinion about a topic and who are not aligned with one or the other of the major political parties.
Most important of all, we need open political parties. Closed and secretive political parties are not democratic. Self-serving cliques we can do without.
What concerns a political party concerns the people. In politics, you go to the top to be of service to others. We should always remember this. It is the basis of true democracy.
Desmond Zammit Marmarà is a Balzan Labour councillor.