Judging by what I’ve seen of the Nationalist Party leadership contest, I think we can safely assume that the country will effectively be without a strong Opposition party for some time yet. This raises two questions: first, given that the country is doing so dazzlingly well, do we need an Opposition at all?; second, how might we go about opposing in the absence of the PN?
It may be the heat, the humidity, and some clams I ate last night that didn’t quite smell right, but I don’t think the country is doing well at all. Or rather it is, in the same way as someone who hoovers up 20 hot dogs in two minutes and makes it to the record books is doing well.
Malta is a place of breathtaking all-round shabbiness and poor standards. The roads are rubbish and the built-up environment an ever-worsening wasteland of convenience shops, petrol stations, tower cranes, billboards and showrooms. There’s dust everywhere, and tap water is so bad that most people spend their Saturday mornings lugging around crates of plastic bottles.
Any place that’s worth anything is so overrun by tourists that many of us have just given up on going anywhere. Schoolchildren spend most of their lives in cars wondering why their parents use the word ‘traffic’ and sexual and religious language in the same sentence. The word ‘sustainable’, on the other hand, is nowhere to be seen.
Meanwhile, the ratings agencies tell us about the exalted state of our economy. That’s the 20 hot dogs bit. It’s an economy of big numbers and glut, without the slightest nod to quality of life broadly defined. If the European Drug Report is to be believed, even our cocaine and marijuana are the lowest quality in Europe – and this when I can see why so many people seem to need them.
It would be both wrong and unfair to hold Joseph Muscat’s Labour singly responsible for this sorry state of affairs. It is, however, accurate to say that the present government has bought into the disaster formula in a big way. There is next to no new thinking about things like sustainability and balance. All we hear is that there’s more of the same, and that Konrad Mizzi is working hard to make it even more.
Malta is a place of breathtaking all-round shabbiness and poor standards
There is, then, a pressing need for a strong Opposition. There are also three ways to make one. The first is to work to strengthen the PN. I’m not a party animal and unable to say much on that one. I’m sure some are working on it, and I wish them well. My choice for the best man for the job would have been Alex Perici Calascione, who seemed by far the sanest and least self-consumed. (Chris Said is about as electable as a dead cat.)
The second is to set up a new party that would be strong enough to do the trick. The record in this department is not particularly encouraging. Neither the PD nor AD is remotely the weakest blip on government’s warning radar. As to what might be done to break the mould, parties are not my thing and I should rather pass.
There is, happily, a third way by which to create a sustained and strong Opposition. It is completely party-free and involves no tearful declarations of loyalty to flags, anthems, and storja glorjuża (glorious past). Tactically, it borrows on the methods used by militias or guerrilla fighters.
Take issue-specific citizens’ movements, by which I mean the likes of Front Kontra l-Golf Course, Front Ħarsien ODZ, and such. The examples we’ve seen had to do with environmental issues, with the exception of Front Kontra ċ-Ċensura. Their success rate compares very favourably with that of Opposition parties. It’s no mean achievement that there are no golf balls to be seen around Verdala and Xagħra l-Ħamra.
The second means by which citizens can organise themselves into a vertebrate Opposition is through the media. The so-called social media are particularly well-placed in this respect, given their accessibility. The problem is that we’ve yet to understand what independent commentary is all about – possibly a legacy of whole generations of minds moulded by Rediffusion and Xandir Malta.
Be that as it may, many people seem to think of independent commentary as some kind of State newspaper, bound by statute to serve up the official, respectable and balanced version. I find it astonishing, for example, that we speak of blogs and writing and commentary as a pathology. The staple question set to (Nationalist, mostly) politicians seems to have been borrowed from Catholic baptismal liturgy: “Do you renounce The Blogger and her works?”
Writing and blogs are, in fact, the exact opposite of a pathology. They are the lifeblood of a healthy democracy. If there is a problem with Daphne Caruana Galizia, it is that she is not three people writing three blogs. I’m saying we need more Daphnes, not less. Strong writing will have its foibles, but it has the power to organise readers into a party-free opposition to be reckoned with.
The third means by which people can come together to make a DIY Opposition is through locality-based movements. An example would be the current resistance by residents of Pembroke to a proposal for a school. At present these movements tend to restrict themselves to environmental issues, but there’s no reason why they can’t explore broader options.
The PN will probably take its sweet time to find its footing post-Armageddon. Meanwhile, we can get to work on opposing L-Aqwa Żmien, which is anything but.
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