It is not the first time that the personal position of a single MP has changed the balance of power in the House of Representatives, and so altered the political course of history.
Lawrence Gonzi ignored the electorate’s message. He has been acting with growing hubris and arrogance- Lino Spiteri
I do not know what will happen on Thursday, when the House votes on a motion of no confidence in the government put forward by the opposition. It is a fact, though, that this time round the possibility of one government backbench MP’s vote effectively toppling the government has now triggered a discussion about the nature of our Constitution insofar as elector provisions are concerned.
Let’s go back a bit. In April 1962 the Legislative Assembly met for the first time since the British government had suspended Malta’s constitution and imposed four years of direct colonial rule after Dom Mintoff’s first Labour government resigned.
They were tumultuous years. The axis of the local ‘war’ shifted, from Labour against Britain, to the Malta Curia against Labour. Archbishop Michael Gonzi became Mintoff’s major political foe. He used mortal sin and the interdict against Labour with the ease whereby mythical Zeus flings thunderbolts when angry.
The Curia also shepherded an eager Nationalist Party and a number of smaller fry under its political umbrella, to make expertly sure that in the election under a new constitution not a single vote against Labour would be lost through the single transferable vote system.
The Nationalist Party was, as expected, the main beneficiary. Nevertheless, it only elected 25 MPs out of the 50 of us who were to sit in the House. There was early stalemate about the election of a Speaker, with Herbert Ganado, who had split from the Nationalist Party and was elected to formal opposition, displaying his parliamentary inexperience, swiftly exploited by Nationalist Prime Minister George Borg Olivier.
Even so, the Nationalists still could not count on a voting majority. Until, that is, one of Ganado’s small group of MPs – Coronato Attard of Gozo – stood up to say he was in disagreement with his leader, and unceremoniously crossed the floor.
The government and the Nationalist Party were elated. Though the Archbishop and mortal sin on those who voted Labour had not been enough to give them a parliamentary majority, Attard, immaterial of the fact that his Gozitan voters had preferred Ganado’s party and not the PN, handed it to them on a plate.
Happily, Attard, as affable a man as I recall from that bad era, was not branded a traitor. Rather, he became a hero in the annals of the Nationalist Party.
Nor was mention made of any need to insert in the forthcoming Independence Constitution a provision to ensure sustainable majority rule.
Come 1998. Labour had won with a single-member majority two years earlier, although its 8,000+ votes overall majority should have given it a majority of three. Mintoff exploited that situation mercilessly to try to get rid of Prime Minister Alfred Sant. Twenty-two months into its life, the Labour government resigned after Mintoff, massaged by a calculating Nationalist opposition, voted against on a vote which, though not a money vote, Sant had turned into a vote of confidence.
The gleeful Nationalists went on to win a massive victory. No one at the time raised a voice about the perils to parliamentary majority rule inherent in the government having a single-member majority.
This time round a Nationalist MP has felt ignored and sidelined on six meritorious issues he has been plugging with Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi for nearly four years. He felt driven to a point where he declared, three weeks ago, that he no longer had confidence in Gonzi. Not unlike Attard in 1962.
On Thursday the MP might not turn up, or abstain, or actually carry out his threat and vote for the motion of no confidence, ushering in an early general election. Whatever. Anyone who follows the news knows that Gonzi and his team have been behaving as if only they have the right to govern – otherwise Malta and the whole world would collapse.
Such unmitigated and undemocratic arrogance is increasing. In parallel there is talk of the perils inherent in our electoral trappings. It is being suggested that we fiddle with the Constitution to avoid single-seat majorities, to give the winning side a majority of three MPs, though they it had not earned them. Governability is quoted as the reason for that, as if it is a new concept.
I disagree. We should, most certainly, amend our electoral provisions. We should have a system that gives equal value to all valid votes, starting off with a reasonable threshold – say equivalent to one quota – to give small parties a fair democratic chance. We should have as much as mathematically possible strict proportionality between valid votes and seats.
The major parties continue to shy away from such democratic fairness. Yet now we hear voices from both sides alarmed at the perils of single-member majorities.
If that is what strict proportionality yields it is because the people, in their wisdom, want the winning party to know that it has precarious backing, and should act as consensually as can be.
That is what the electorate told GonziPN in 2008, when it did not give it an absolute majority of votes, and one of under 1,700 votes ahead of Labour.
Gonzi ignored the electorate’s message. He has been acting with growing hubris and arrogance. He has been a bad example which must not be followed.
Let the people decide on the size of the majority, through strict proportionality, not fiddling to usurp their will. Only Nero fiddled while Rome burned.