Health, pensions and democracy

There are a number of issues we can be certain will not be decided before the next election whenever that will take place. It is already too late. We can be pretty sure that controversial issues such as divorce or hunting will be avoided like the plague. We can make a safe bet that nothing significant will be done about rent reform or the absurd cost of property. At this point we can also give up on anything at all being done about health service reform and pensions.

For people whose interests are centred on such issues, the aftermath of the next election is an enigma wrapped in fudging. They can expect loud noises and lots of smoke on all sorts of issues but nothing clear on what concerns them most.

The social pressure, quite apart from Alternattiva Demokratika's clear stance in favour of divorce, is clearly mounting. In its 1998 electoral manifesto, the PN promised a law on cohabitation, which would have brought the country as close as possible to having divorce without actually having it. Today, PN exponents proudly boast that breaking their promise is a sign of their adherence to principles. The only one I can make out in all this is political expedience at all costs. With the MLP now reneging on its 1998 stance, the PN will not be moved to mention the issue this time around.

The banning of hunting in spring, a minimal and most reasonable restraint approved by the majority of the Maltese and an obligation the EU will eventually enforce, is also postponed to after the election. Having painted one another into a corner on the hunting issue, both the PN and the MLP will want to avoid the issue, since our government, whoever gains it, will be under the same EU pressure after the election. They will have to ban spring hunting but they would prefer not to tell anyone.

The government has been under pressure from the Greens on rent reform since the last election and has reacted by fudging, waffling and promising. It has religiously refused to acknowledge that the Greens' rent law reform bid by referendum is part of a wider recognition of the social, environmental and economic impacts of skyrocketing property prices. The government keeps its fudging and waffling strictly limited to the question of rent law reform proper, refusing to address the wider issues.

It can be expected to adamantly ignore the statement made last week by the Church commission on the environment regarding the price of property. The long-term hardship imposed on young homemakers being burdened by crushing loans will be overwhelmed by the government's boasts of economic recovery, new roads, Smart City villas and a booming construction sector.

The government and the opposition are fully committed to the construction sector having full faith that a never-ending building boom is natural, healthy and, of all things, sustainable. This government has, illegally, I would say, extended development boundaries, irresponsibly removed height limitations and insensitively provoked the demolition of village core properties as well as some on which the plaster of a first construction had not fully set. Planning has become a contradiction in terms, offering not even the minimal certainty the word implies. No property owner can be sure what havoc the election after next will wreak. The opposition dreams of a building boom creating such a volume of waste for the foreseeable future that it will be building new islands all around us.

None of the above holds as much uncertainty as the growing silence on health service and pension reform. It is clear from many loud statements made several months ago that this government has reform in these sectors very high on its internal agenda. They have been allowed to fall from public view once the mid-term boldness faded. We can all be sure that they will be bubbling furiously on the front burner once the election is over.

While the opposition has successfully prevented any such reform without making any proposal of its own, the government has shown that a free health service for all is considered a luxury the country can no longer afford. While the opposition shrugs off government concerns about the unsustainability of the pensions system and insists that it should be tackled following the election, it has made no reform proposal of its own, leaving the government proposing a vague reform but now reduced to silence about it.

Both the other parties propose to be the next government alone, to the exclusion of all others, undisturbed to do precisely what they want, when they want, for the five years after their coronation. What it is they will do precisely, they will not say. Voters will not even have a choice limited to two sets of blueprints of which they will be obliged to choose one. They know, but everything will be done not to remind them, that once the election is over, whichever party takes power, a reform will take place. In view of the delay, it is even less likely that it will be the result of authentic consultation.

Health and pensions are issues which concern us all sooner or later. We may or may not tend to become hot under the collar about divorce, hunting or rent reform. We may or may not be prepared to live with the uncertainty of political fudging on those issues. On access to health services and our pension entitlement we are unlikely to be able to await the outcome unconcerned.

Senior citizens share one overriding concern; how will they deal with increasing frailty combined with greater economic vulnerability? Will a lifetime's contributions to security in their old age be devalued? Will they become a burden on their children? Will the legacy they hoped to leave them be wiped out?

It is not an issue for OAPs alone. Younger people facing economic burdens never faced by their seniors to secure a roof over their heads need to know whether they will be shouldering much heavier financial burdens in the immediate future. Will they and their children have secure access to health services from next year? Will it become a question of whether or not they can afford it? How much more will they have to put aside for their pensions? It is no longer a matter which they can put off for a decade or two. In a few months the din of the election will have subsided and they may then be asked to start forking out far more than they already do in insurance, health and pension contributions. Many of them already find they have no quality of life left as things stand.

It is in this context that they watch the PN and MLP coming to terms to carve up between them what remains of democracy. The efforts of the two big parties to exclude any third party and to ensure single-party government for all future time may be sold to them as avoidance of political chaos, a safeguard against ungovernability and other likely stories. It gives them not a clue about what the future holds except that whoever holds power will have acquired a blank cheque to determine their future. Every Maltese is being treated with the unselfconscious arrogance with which the Greens are being treated.

The Greens' policies on all such issues are crystal clear. Unlike our absconding opposition, Alternattiva Demokratika has participated in debates and submitted its comments on all crucial long-term issues. Its policies on other issues regarded as dispensable minority matters by the government are just as well known. However, what is of far greater value to every Maltese citizen is the knowledge that the Greens will always remain bound to the democratic method; that we will always insist on genuine consultation on all such issues following the broadest possible publication of the known facts.

Thanks to the methods adopted by our colleagues in Parliament, it is clearer than ever that the Greens are a valuable, democratic alternative to government by fait accompli, by smart surprises, to the preferred method of the two other parties: power all in one place and unassailable producing uncertainty, stress and an evaporating quality of life.

Dr Vassallo is chairman of Alternattiva Demokratika - The Green Party.

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