Bring back abstaining voters

In the first survey of this year published by MaltaToday in January it is confirmed once more that around 100,000 of registered citizens entitled to vote in national elections intend to abstain.

This trend has been growing over the last decade and can be caused by several factors.

Experts have suggested loss of confidence and trust in the political class as one factor. Another is the antiquated two-party or tribal system that has ruled Malta since the 1970s. A third factor is the close liaison between a small group of businessmen who finance the two main parties in order to garner their support whoever wins the two-horse race that has been the hallmark of the last seven or eight elections.

This cosy cronyism which has brought the authenticity of the Maltese character of these islands to breaking point has chased many away from protesting or even voting since they find the present arrangement so fixed in concrete – no pun intended – that they resign themselves to sitting on the sidelines.

Yet, the last survey had another result that has not been highlighted by commentators or the political parties themselves. If the results of the survey are to be trusted, with only 70% of the voting population intending to vote, Labour would have 48.9% of those voting and the Nationalists 45.7% – a gap of 3.2%. But the third parties together hold 5.4%.

The winner of the next election would be the party which can either bring back a larger proportion of those not intending to vote back into the polling booths and to vote for them or to force the 5.4% of the third-party supporters to cast their votes for one of the two major parties.

Yet, there might be a third way which would break the concrete mould that the oligarchs in Malta have created through their overt and covert funding of the two major parties that allows them to destroy our culture, our heritage and our landscape.

The third way would be to foster the potential of government by coalitions.

Malta experienced a period, from the 1920s until the early 1970s, in which its political landscape was marked by a plurality of parties representing diverse views. Whether religious or secular, monarchical or republican, agrarian or commercially oriented, different groups formed their own parties.

This had its good and bad sides. It was very good that all interests in a country could be expressed through political parties and through membership in parliament and in government. Its bad sides are fragmentation, weak and sometimes easily broken governments that failed to survive their full terms and the bad examples of post-war Italy, the 1930s Germany and others where too many parties vying for votes made the countries unworkable and led to the rise of dictatorships such as in Portugal, Spain, Italy, Germany and Greece.

Malta, having strong British influence in our education system and pre-independence government, tended to follow the trends of the UK, which also moved towards a two-party system, believing that to be a more solid way to have strong stable governments.

There are good examples of functioning solid governments based upon multiparty elections and the creation of coalitions- John Vassallo

But there are good examples of functioning solid governments based upon multiparty elections and the creation of coalitions. Look at the Netherlands, Sweden, Italy today under Giorgia Meloni and Germany throughout the last 30 years. These countries have been the power houses of the EU and, yet, managed to rule through coalitions. In times of emergencies even the two largest parties joined ranks in so-called national or grand coalitions to promote the best interests of the country.

It may be the right time now in Malta for a pre-election coalition agreement or sets of agreements to be entered into by whichever of the large parties wishes to take the lead and to join ranks in the run up to the next elections with the minor parties.

Such an agreement should preserve the name, independence and political programme of each party, regardless of its size. At the same time, it would guarantee smaller parties a ministerial post if, by virtue of the coalition, they succeed in surpassing the electoral threshold that the two major parties had previously established in their own entrenched interests.

 Even without changing this threshold from a tribally oriented electoral district level to a national one, as is done in Germany or the Netherlands, for example, I am sure that with such pre-election coalition agreements that guarantee ministerial posts to the minor parties, there is a greater chance of attracting those 100,000 persons who decided not to vote in the last election and who seem intent of repeating their abstention next time too back to vote.

I am sure that if there is hope of breaking the stranglehold that developers and tax advisers have on our two parties today, many of the 100,000 would come back to vote and a good number would vote for one or two of the smaller third parties too. But they will only do that if they have guarantees that their party of choice would be respected by the one of the two large parties.

Having hope of a minister with environmental and cultural heritage objectives for Malta or for a minister with an anti-corruption and rule of law orientation and not just lip service that the Labour Party has shown to have had these last 13 years would bring back non-voters.

The Nationalists refused to form a coalition in the last election and they lost. Urging smaller parties to dissolve or to join the larger parties proved unsuccessful.

It is time to try a different formula: to follow the example of our northern neighbours and work in the pre-election period to build genuine coalitions, with commitments that would be honoured in the event of victory.

John Vassallo is a former ambassador to the EU.