A third political force?

It is a fact. Malta is harbouring a growing number of disenfranchised and disillusioned voters who are hungry for a new direction. The need is felt for a new political party. Just imagine what sort of impact 70,000 indifferent voters can have on the country. Can the time be just right for a peripheral or new party to enter the fray and seize the opportunity?

Can we build a new political party, replacing either the Nationalists or the Labourites, or perhaps both? A lot of Maltese want one.

Is the time right for an end to our two party system? Photo: Matthew Mirabelli

Some have abandoned the Labour Party while others now consider themselves a band of outsider revolutionaries overthrowing what their respective party used to represent to drain its swamp.

The Nationalists, on the other hand, are divided between a beleaguered faction incessantly frustrated by the party’s listlessness and inability to act and another faction wanting to overthrow what they see as a useless artefact of neoliberalism from within. Some well-intentioned people are now exploring building another new party, mainly former nationalists and labourites unhappy with their party’s recent turn but few think they have much chance of making their efforts work in a way that can revolutionise our politics.

Given the recent history of failed third parties, most traditional and Maltese party-aligned voters believe new parties are pointless efforts because they never win. They see new parties as spoilers, hopeless one-off vanity campaigns for attracting media attention fuelled by the narcissism of bored intelligentsia or irrelevant playacting from deluded radicals who do not understand how politics in Malta actually works.

This widespread conventional wisdom is understandable. But it is completely wrong.

The goal of forming a new party is not to create a stalemate between the two major parties vying for influence. Nor is it to offer every Maltese a comfortable political home that perfectly reflects his or her idiosyncratic values without making compromises with others. It is to replace a major party and become the next major party in a new political era.

Mark Said, LL.D. – Msida