As the nation congratulates itself on its democratic maturity, I increasingly find myself identifying with the bishops. If I’ve been keeping tabs correctly, they (and their minions) are the only ones who have not been congratulated. But I cannot help feeling that the congratulations that have been addressed at me, as an ordinary voter, are undeserved.
For one thing, I lack discernment. When the bishops issued their statement late on Saturday, I could just about tell that it betrayed communicative incompetence (but even then I was helped by an inkling I’ve had for years). But I never fathomed that their expression of regret – at any unintentional hurt felt by anyone on either side of the campaign – was not what I usually assume it is: a reconciliatory gesture combined with a pointed refusal to give an outright apology (which is why expressions of regret often infuriate me).
No, this time it really was an apology – and addressed only to the Yes sympathisers, whatever the statement said.
Thankfully, the media noticed and held the bishops to account. Mgr Paul Cremona wriggled and tried to say it wasn’t an apology as such. But the media held firm. Thank God the oversight of public debate is in their hands, not mine. Hawk-eyed media are vital for democracies.
But my inadequacy runs far deeper. I am so completely out of touch with the wellsprings of maturity that you might call me a prepubescent democrat.
The evidence is damning. For example, I thought the polls showing a large number of undecided voters reflected guile and confusion, a weed of a thought irrigated by surveys showing significant numbers of people thinking that divorce laws permitted remarriage in church, etc.
Now I have it on greater authority that I was sadly mistaken. Deborah Schembri apparently said that the fact that many people were undecided till voting day showed they were really thinking hard about the issue – another call for congratulations. Whereas I was thoughtless enough to know I wanted to vote yes as soon as the referendum was called. I deserve to be patronised.
It gets worse. Arrogance must be added to my sins. I am proud of my vote but pride blinded me. I arrogated to myself the right to vote as I please. Thanks to Joseph Muscat, I now know it is party political leaders who release the electorate to vote according to their conscience. You don’t have a free vote till a leader tells you. If he does, it shows magnanimous tolerance on his part. If he does not, it shows he wants to dictate what you do.
I am glad that my arrogance is unlike divorce: not contagious. With more wretches like me running around, some idiot might have publicly expressed puzzlement as to why Dr Muscat was being hailed for his tolerance. And the country would have had shame heaped upon it and been featured on Al Jazeera again, for all the wrong reasons.
Indeed, I shudder when I think of all the occasions I had to betray myself. Remember when the Nationalist Party’s executive council decided the party’s position on divorce and congratulated itself on the mature discussion? I tried hard but eventually blurted out that I could not understand what was so mature about a discussion that, having set out the history and social consequences of divorce as its benchmark, proceeded to ignore the standards set by historians and sociologists of the European family.
Thankfully, such embarrassing occasions were rare (thanks also to the Arab Spring, which attracted my flighty attention). Otherwise, who knows what I might have said when, before the referendum was called, MPs lined up to express their solemn understanding of what political representation means. I thought it included, among other things, the representation of my best interests, even if I was not entirely clued up about what they were.
Evidently not. An MP can behave only like a delegate at a condominium meeting – with the right to vote only as I have instructed him. And, once a consultative referendum has been held, it’s winner take all: MPs must vote unanimously and in line with the majority.
I can now see that, even in the case of a referendum whose vote illustrates the social diversity of a country, the magic of representation demands that the parliamentary vote is uniform. The majority of people becomes all of them, the People. Referendum doctrine says that “Some are All”. I’d have never figured it out on my own.
If I confess all this it is because I find my democratic immaturity and irresponsibility almost unbearable. I can hardly read the papers or watch the grave and mature TV discussions. At such moments, I realise that I am so removed from the notion of gravitas that I don’t even know whether to spell it with one letter S or two.
ranierfsadni@europe.com