After five years, during which many thought he was hibernating, Austin Bencini is back on the scene with his magnum opus. It was thanks to Martin Scicluna (March 13) that we learned about this study on the evolution of our electoral law which he defines as “an excellent book”, albeit then leaving it to us to discover wherein lies this excellence.
Indeed the only points he seemed to share with Bencini, practically the main thrust of his article, were a hoary old chestnut and three pieces of underhand political deceit.
Strange bedfellows Bencini and Scicluna one would say; but the reasons underpinning their agreement on crucial points are not strange at all. Scicluna does not lose an opportunity of forging an alliance, even crossing an unfriendly border, to break a lance with a common perceived ‘enemy’. In this case the ‘enemies’ are the smaller parties: the minnows to the sharks.
Scicluna says: “The Maltese are not natural team players, and the essence of coalitions lies in a willingness to compromise on policies and manifesto commitments.” Not quite so!
It would be much more honest to say that it is the leading politicians from the big parties who are not natural team players, etc.; that it is they who have brainwashed their faithful into thinking in the same warped way: namely that any coalition with a smaller party is the worst thing a big party could consider.
As for natural team players, a reference to the bitter experience of the small Lib Dem coalition with the ‘broad church’ of the conservatives in the UK would have been very relevant. At the 2017 elections, the Lib Dem, after the fatal hug of the Tories, was practically annihilated.
Scicluna holds that: “While fairness argues for an end to the current duopoly on political representation by the PN and LP by increasing the chance of smaller parties getting elected, [Hear, hear!, but wait for it] the instability which could arise through their holding the balance of power in the House of Representatives – leading to coalition government – should not be underestimated.” And the initial ‘fairness’ is demolished in one fell swoop.
He feels no hesitation in recycling this dishonest argument as an apparently fair warning. As if his subtle reference to the “instability” caused by small parties has any credible basis when compared to the fairness of the smaller parties’ claim for fairer representation.
Scicluna could instead have reminded us that the only two cases of instability many of us have known in our lifetime were both internal to the big parties: Mintoff vs Sant and Pullicino Orlando vs Gonzi.
Every informed person knows that practically all Europe has been, for long years now, governed by coalitions. These have shown that compromise can be and should be negotiated between parties for the common good.
Coalitions are of the essence in any democracy and have in most cases proved workable and healthy. Yet locally small parties have been consistently pictured as inevitably leading to weak or paralysed governments. This is the belief that Bencini and Scicluna seem to share and which, not so timidly, they are pushing forward again for the serious consideration by an eventual constitutional review committee.
Big political parties do not like to have too close a partner overseeing their wheeling and dealing
As if in case of disagreement within a coalition, the small party is always in the wrong; that it has no right to abide by its electoral programme, to uphold the rights of its voters and, above all, to abide by the conditions of the coalition.
No, the only right, the right to rule with no shackles of control by minnows, seems to belong of necessity to the big party; the eternal ‘might is right’.
And again, as if a small party would consider for a moment on a whim causing a government to which it is party to fall by voting against a money Bill. A small party can never afford this. Important policies are after all agreed upon before forming a coalition.
No surprise then that Scicluna and Bencini speak highly of the three post-independence “ingenious” corrective mechanisms to ensure positive electoral results, albeit leaving “a significant minority of the electorate disenfranchised and unrepresented in Parliament.” I cannot help being moved to tears.
One need hardly be reminded that these ingenious corrections were meant to save us from unfair, or even perverse, electoral results due to gerrymandering and other ‘ingenious’ machinations devised by the big parties to favour themselves unfairly.
These corrective mechanisms were far from strictly accidental. They were obviously designed to perpetuate the duopoly; veritable nails in the coffin of smaller parties. The battle for the no. 1 vote was on and it went viral; the main slogan of the big parties now was, and still is, that unless you vote for one of them then you are simply wasting your vote.
Scicluna then is very wary not to tread into the dark area of corruption. I suppose he knows as well as we do that corruption has an easier day under a single-party rule than under a coalition.
Big parties do not like to have too close a partner overseeing their wheeling and dealing. Yet this aspect of single-party rule is often conveniently overlooked in scholarly and highbrow considerations.
So much for the lip service to ‘fairness’, further underlined again, lest one forgets, in the closing paragraph of Scicluna’s article:
“The possibility of the strong and stable democratic government, which the STV (Single Transferable Vote) hybrid currently provides – with the people knowing exactly which party is accountable – should not be abandoned lightly.”
Again, much good it does to know ‘exactly’ which party is responsible (never mind the thick fog of the political smoke canisters) if voters cannot lift a finger to change matters.
No, Sir, the electoral law does not need reviewing; it needs a thorough rethinking. But, can we as a society agree on the names of the trusted honourable men to whom we could assign this thankless task?
Joseph Agius is a retired education officer and a former active environmentalist.
This is a Times of Malta print opinion piece