In chess, playing attentively into a stalemate can be a rewarding tactic to tackle a difficult game. Other times, a less attentive player might notice with dismay that all his pieces are locked, producing a vexatious moment for our distracted friend, to the delight of his opponent.

The public relations game between the Labour and Nationalist parties feels ever more like a perpetual stalemate. This needn’t imply they are equal: one of them is in power. It is a stalemate in that the democratic process today has been impeded by this tit-for-tat method of public discourse between the parties, the same parties that ought to be representing the quasi-entirety of the Maltese population, and who now cannot engage in productive debate.

Red and blue are embedded deeply in the collective Maltese experience.

That the two parties represent two versions of the truth, depending on who you ask and when you ask them, is a given. But to paint them as relatively antithetical entities may not be the entire picture.

Supporters of either party portray the other camp villainously, fuelled by their respective propaganda machines.

Condemnations and denials are together the prescribed formula for what gets reported in the press.

Take, for instance, the PN’s reaction to Ian Borg’s grossly incompetent comment on majority rule. The implication was clear, reflective of the reiterative government mantra: we have the (silent) majority, therefore we ought not to be accountable to criticism.

If the “choices that the people make” necessarily mean an immunity to accountability, then put simply, you have an elective dictatorship. Labour conveniently and lazily dismissed the comment as spin in response to the PN and went on to attack Adrian Delia for thinking he can evade taxes, Panama Papers notwithstanding.

Yet, this is just one example.

By bilaterally bickering ad aeternum, useful political energy is frittered away, and the space for political debate is replaced by petty insults, logical fallacies, contradictions and deliberate attempts at deceptively manipulating opinion, all of which prove to be revolting to the independent thinker, who is treated like a fool by her politicians.

The astounding power of Labour’s PR offensive is encapsulated in the aftermath of Tony Zarb’s flagrantly misogynistic attacks. Labour accused critics (what’s new?) of double standards since they didn’t raise hell after Simon Busuttil expressed his distaste at Rosianne Cutajar. Being able to get away with comparing two things of altogether different proportions would infuriate any critical newsreader.

The more cynical observer would see the parties as acting in concert to dominate the agenda and restrain intelligent and pertinent discourse from taking centre stage.

Descriptively, this seems to be the case.

The PN has been desperately impotent since Daphne’s murder

This implied agreement between the two parties has now resulted in the PN getting the short end of the stick.

More gravely, it means Malta is lacking an effective partisan Opposition. Besides pushing for EU-level resolutions and issuing statements, the PN has been desperately impotent since Daphne’s murder.

The PN is attempting to restructure itself while also fighting impunity in this government. For a weakened party with an arguably weak leader, both cannot be done simultaneously. Here, the citizen faces a dilemma. Invest in the Opposition, or press for accountability independently, through non-partisan channels?

A strong democracy requires a stable Opposition. At present, the Labour government is exploiting this weakness, shooting down PN arguments before they are barely made with partisan excuses. For an abundance of evidence, see any statement released by the PN to the media and scroll to the bottom for the PL reply.

On a partisan level, it’s a vicious circle facilitated by an utterly emasculated Opposition. But the government tends to be less overbearing when it comes to the non-partisan movements. Muscat ignored Occupy Justice for four days before deigning to offer an invitation.

The same arguments from the Civil Society Network are not shot down as quickly or impulsively. A non-sequitur PL reply as a natural reaction to a PN statement has become humdrum, an unvarying, frustrating occurrence everyone has come to expect.

This is not the case when rational, non-partisan criticism is voiced.

There is little counter-argumentation made available for the Labour government. Two options have been used frequently.

The first, as with Occupy Justice, is to bury its head in the sand and wait for it to subside while parading some foreign investment, glorifying an opportune drug bust, suddenly legalising medical marijuana, etc.

The second is reflective of the bipartisan problem. By attempting to stain the non-partisan image of the CSN, the Labour machine tries treating it as a faction of the PN and would resort to the good old-fashioned model for shallow rebuttals.

The predicament profoundly undermines the possibility of fruitful dissent.

If the PN is being used as a drain to filter out criticism portrayed to be tainted with partisan motives, however untrue this may be, then perhaps the energy to revitalise it should be focused elsewhere.

New, perhaps non-partisan, chess pieces ought to be brought into play to draw the game out of this irksome, disheartening stalemate.

Benjamin Dalli is a law student at the University of Glasgow.

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