As the House of Representatives returns from its long summer recess, refreshed one hopes by the holiday break from the hurly-burly of daily politics, it is worth taking stock of what we should expect of our politicians and what we might actually get. Like everything in life, it is a mixed bag.

What has been a matter for concern about Maltese politics in the twelve months before the summer recess is that the nature of public debate has reached an embarrassing nadir. There have been too many occasions when the Prime Minister and the leader of the Opposition engage in petty point-scoring and puerile name-calling.

Ministers, parliamentary secretaries and their Opposition shadows, too, have inevitably adopted the same behaviour. Not to be outdone, backbench members of parliament have joined in the spirit of yah-boo politics, with one or two – this being Malta, made up of macho Mediterranean men – even threatening physical violence.

There is a raft of received armchair truisms about the quality of our politicians and their behaviour, of which most of us – commentators and readers alike – are guilty. That all politicians are the same. That they are all in it for themselves. That they are all corrupt. That they are all in the pockets of vested interests. They are all self-serving clones of their historic tribal Maltese prejudices. And that they are all liars.

Let me deal with this last issue first, for it is not true. The art of politics is not to lie. The truth is that in politics it is perfectly acceptable to say any number of things that encourage people to believe something untrue, provided you don’t tell an out-and-out falsehood. It may be cynical to accept this, but this has been the nature of the politics of democracy since Pericles.

Any columnist or journalist who has covered a modicum of politics knows that the things we say about politicians, including Maltese politicians, are mostly untrue, reflecting narrow party prejudice and, almost invariably, biased and uninformed opinion.

Politicians may be sometimes less impressive than you would like and full of their own importance. They are occasionally single-issue obsessives, prone to self-righteousness and thin-skinned. Why otherwise would the highest number of criminal libel suits be filed by politicians?

Their ‘principles’, such as they are, are flexible: “Those are my principles and if you don’t like them I’ll change them” are the words cynics ascribe to politicians.

But the fact is they are a pretty representative, mixed bunch – the same as the rest of us. They are on the whole lazy thinkers. And in this respect they are very representative of those who elect them, especially in Malta where the overwhelming majority of the electorate votes on tribal lines with little thought about the issues.

It is often said that we get the politicians that we deserve. Actually, we get the politicians that we ourselves fashion

Most of our politicians got into politics because they wanted to be useful and do some good. I have yet to meet a politician in Malta, whose raison d’etre was to do evil and make the lives of the constituents who elected them miserable. On the contrary, in my experience most have heeded the call to public service.

But columnists and journalists don’t point this out. We tend to collude in the received wisdom – prevalent in Malta – that “all politicians are all in it for themselves”. We seem to get some sort of cathartic pleasure from undermining the powerful or the successful, rather like trolling them on line as happens in one notorious blog.

Many of my fellow columnists behave like Stanley Tucci, the actor who played the host in The Hunger Games, gleefully stoking up the anger and encouraging the baying audience (the core supporters of either PN or PL) to stick it to the politicians – especially if they belong to the ‘other’ side. I am consistently surprised to read the copy produced by columnists whose weekly efforts at attacking ‘the other side’ must take the prize for navel-gazing.

We have come to the understanding that the best way in which to treat politicians is to interrogate and criticise them with increasing vehemence and intolerance. To interrupt and bludgeon and ask “when did you stop beating your wife” questions of them.

This in turn has taught our politicians to parrot rote answers defensively and to ignore questions. To see interviews with the public not as their duty to inform, but as avoiding gaffes and carrying out damage limitation exercises.

Many believe the only way to engage politicians is to confront them, or make them confront each other, as if bullying were the path to honesty and improved performance. Ad hominem politics and attack-dog journalism have created an environment in which young people or talented professionals do not want to enter public life.

It is often said that we get the politicians that we deserve. Actually, we get the politicians that we ourselves fashion. It is plainly true that the man who wins the argument does not necessarily have the best argument. The man who makes the fewest mistakes will not necessarily get the most things right. Keeping the nation safe and secure and fiscally successful should not be the result of making exaggerated promises and flattering the bullying masses.

Politics is a strange combination of passion and reason. To win, politicians need to make sure their heads rule their hearts, not vice versa. But knowledge among politicians is mostly in short supply.

Part of the problem lies in the part-time nature of the large majority of Maltese politicians whose members are known to absent themselves on a regular basis from attending the House, with the result that parliament depends almost exclusively on the executive (Prime Minister and Cabinet) for it to function.

Worse, the institution itself and all non-Cabinet Members of Parliament have no staff or funds to inform themselves properly about issues and to carry out the basic work required to monitor the legislation being introduced. Politicians – backbench MPs – are therefore simply seen as cannon-fodder traipsing through the division lobbies to vote.

The effect of this is deep irresponsibility. If the only requirement imposed on a member of Parliament is to turn up and vote when, and how, instructed by the party whips, this is not calculated to produce an active engagement with the issues. Nor does it lead to proper representation of the views of constituents.

The House of Representatives has become just one arena in which the permanent election campaign between the parties is played out. But governments need to be held to account for what they do on a continuous basis, not just on the periodic days of electoral reckoning.

Parliament is constitutionally charged with this responsibility, on behalf of the people. This duty is not simply incumbent on the Opposition members of Parliament, but also on all backbench MPs. Government and Opposition meet to do battle in the permanent election campaign that defines and dominates Maltese politics.

Politics has many more good people than bad and the process succeeds more than it fails. But Malta still has a long way to go before it gets the kind of democracy promised by our constitution. This takes real engagement by all our politicians and the introduction of proper checks and balances on an over-weening executive.