Making progress

Anybody with an inkling of our constitutional history must acknowledge the massive contribution of the Nationalist Party to the attainment of the very basics of democracy in this country.

The path towards representative government, acquired for the first time in 1921, was beset with trials and tribulations. It was a history of humiliation at the hands of our colonial rulers who evidently considered the whole matter an irritating cost for having and holding the Island Fortress of Malta. They felt no compunction in withdrawing a Constitution whenever they deemed fit, annihilating the small steps forward made in the years before.

It must have been a hard life for anybody in politics. To others, politics must have seemed a rather pointless game for much of this time. Nobody can tell because for more than a century of British rule it was not possible to take a popular vote at all. In 1921 itself, the vote excluded women and had a property qualification limiting the number of those entitled to vote. With so many excluded for generations, it is hard to imagine what ordinary people made of it all.

Harking back to the Declaration of the Rights of the Maltese of 1802, and its long betrayal afterwards, must have seemed pointless, even extravagantly disturbing to many. Still it was the dogged persistence of the Partito Nazionalista first and foremost which drove the slow and painful progress. At every turn they twisted the knife of British pride in Magna Carta and constitutional government, which became monuments to hypocrisy in the Maltese context.

Inspired by the Italian Risorgimento which sent to our shores alternate waves of refugees depending on how the fortunes of Italian nation-forming fared, the challenge to British imperial might took the form of cultural detachment, a constant reminder of the affinity of the educated classes to everything Italian. There was scope for little else. Prior to World War II the mention of secession or independence was high treason punishable by hanging. It is hard to imagine today.

It would have been even harder for Fortunato Mizzi or even for Enrico Mizzi to imagine today's Malta. For Enrico Mizzi, who publicly expressed his desire for Malta some day to become part of Italy, it might be something of a disappointment. He had suffered a court martial in World War I and exile in World War II for his pains. On the other hand, an independent Malta may have been a reality beyond his wildest dreams.

I wonder what he would make of his beloved Partito Nazionalista today. If independent Malta would be mind-boggling, he would find his party's democratic credentials today horrifying. Would he ever have countenanced the avoidance of democracy by his party's strategy group in the Zejtun local election? My guess is that he would have preferred Ugandan exile anew.

Would he have stood by quietly when the party leadership proposed the elimination of all senior citizens from the electoral register in the 2003 EU referendum? Would he have smothered his outrage at the thought of subjecting his veterans to psychiatric examination? Would he have given in to pressure and made the last-minute Luxol speech in 2003 deliberately deceiving his supporters, betraying his allies and confabulating shamelessly about the mechanism of the electoral system? Somehow I doubt it.

What on earth would he make of the 1987, 1996 and the proposed 2007 constitutional amendments? His yearning for representation in his country's Parliament for all those long years of imperial denial would have come back to him. The British are gone. Gone for good. Military necessity and imperial geopolitics no longer hold a stifling wet blanket over political development in Malta. The Partito Nazionalista is the wet blanket. Nothing would be more mind-boggling to him than that.

He would have cringed painfully at the thought that in 1987 his political heirs were unable to imagine a political scenario with more than two political parties. The Greens, upsetting the political applecart in 1992, would have seemed kindred spirits to him. The 1996 fiasco following the Gonzi Commission Report of 1995 would not have sat well with him either. It was naked power politics brazenly neglecting the rights of representation of the weaker party, with the same lack of foresight displayed in 1987. Were his heirs hoping that the Greens would roll over and die? How would he have taken the PN 2003 offer of a seat in Parliament to the Greens, on condition they did not contest that election? He had not bowed to his imperial masters, why should any group of Maltese accept the denial of their rights by their peers?

I wonder how he would react to Austin Bencini's argument (It's Election Time! - December 21) that, since a distorted electoral system has been around for a long time, it must have been accepted by the people on whom it is inflicted. On that reasoning, Enrico Mizzi should have acclimatised to the idea that the Maltese should never have aspired to representative government. For generations they had no right to vote at all, they must have accepted the idea. Could he ever acclimatise to the idea that Dr Bencini teaches constitutional law at our university?

Would he stomach PN president, Victor Scerri's smug retort (Electoral Changes - December 29) that parties become big because of their following? Could he bear the realisation that his successors cannot tell the difference between big and great, that they flaunt their power, which is his legacy earned in years of arduous struggle against identical arrogance? Would he acknowledge that there is nothing left of the Partito Nazionalista but its badge, that its spirit is gone forever?

Thankfully, our electoral system still holds several backdoors. No matter how many times the goalposts are wheeled around, the Greens will finally score. It will take 2,000 votes in one electoral district to make it possible. Now the time is ripe. In every election anything up to 13 MPs may be elected without making the official 16.6 per cent quota. In the current Parliament 11 MPs were elected in this way. With about 2,000 votes in any district, the Greens can find their way to Parliament and acquire representation for the thousands more who support them.

It is to the lasting shame of both the other political parties that they show no compunction when leaving in place an electoral system which, as far as they are concerned, would leave up to a sixth of the electorate voting for the Greens and not having any representation in Parliament at all. In theory, 49,036 of the 294,216 people entitled to vote in Maltese elections could vote Green and remain unrepresented in their Parliament as far as the PN and the MLP are concerned. They don't care.

Fortunately, it is not up to the PN and the MLP leaderships alone. All it will take is for 2,000 voters in any electoral district to upset their applecart once more. If it can happen anywhere, it can happen everywhere. It is unrealistic to expect the Greens to overcome the 16.6 per cent barrier maintained by the other political parties and which certainly holds good for the first four seats in each electoral district. For the fifth seat in each district, the game is open wide, the threshold is often very much lower. Would Enrico Mizzi be downhearted? If not, why should the Greens not be optimistic?

It is not easy finding 2,000 people to vote Green as their first preference in any electoral district in a general election. Yet, it is far from impossible. It is far more possible for the Greens to be represented in their Parliament than it ever was for the Partito Nazionalista to come into being and to survive for as long as it has. If those few thousands have the sympathy and respect of their friends and family who support them by casting second or later preference votes for the Greens, success is assured. Impossible? No. It is almost inevitable. There is every reason to believe that democratic development in Malta will continue to make progress. It always has, and against far greater odds than these.

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

www.alternattiva.org.mt, www.adgozo.com