Any diehard would want his party to wield absolute power, untrammelled by some irritating accord reached with a very minor partner.

Would that diehard feel comfortable if the opposing party wielded that absolute power? Power corrupts, more so if it were absolute. No party, however virtuous, may be so trusted.

The violent events of two generations ago posed a serious threat to this country's democracy. The single- party rule that fomented it bordered on totalitarianism. Recent experience reveals a clear link between the political power vested in the single party and the financial clout manifested by a low-profiled but highly-powered oligarchy.

Malta is one of the few European states not to regulate the financing of political parties. Here, the oligarchy finances both. What does that amount to if not bribery by any other name?

The undeclared MLPN coalition has sold off the country's environment continuously, as the partners ruled in turn. Zero tolerance does not go beyond the lips. The acknowledged environment deficit (disaster, actually) has been proven as the result of the country's recent history of single-party rule, to the detriment of Product Malta.

A coalition has excellent prospects for saving the country from prostitution and the environment from getting further exploited. It is up to the electorate to signal its will towards this end. If the Nationalist Party prefers to ignore such a signal, as some of its pundits are illogically suggesting, it must take responsibility for its sin of pride. AD is not financed by any oligarchy, nor is it on its cards to sell off the environment.

Here are two excellent credentials that the two larger parties have always lacked.

AD will not stop its hypothetical coalition partner from reducing surcharge or tax. Its criticism of these goodies is more in the context of caution against pre-electoral promises that may be difficult to keep.

Instead, AD may use its parliamentary power to counter a threatened breakaway from Europe; to decelerate and hopefully arrest the rape of the environment or what's left of it; to conserve the value of real estate by controlling the surplus supply; to protect the population against the threat of cancer and asthma from pollution; to publicise hidden inconvenient truths; or simply, to tend towards a zero- tolerance level against corruption, more effectively.

Sometimes, a government's downfall becomes a laudable goal. The imagined risk from AD's abuse of the shared power, dear Ranier Fsadni, is drowned by the certainty of total power abuse by the single party, whatever its colour, indeed because of it.

Single party rule evokes Castro, Mugabe, Saddam and Tito. On the other hand, Scandinavia, Germany, Austria and Ireland, if not fractious Italy, have proved that coalition is best.