Any political power, whether it is the knitting society of St Joseph Street or President Joe Biden, that achieves its desired political outcome can frequently be heard calling for unity. From vicious political grenades lobbed onto their opponents throughout the political battle, a miraculous metamorphosis occurs on victory.

Gone are the ad hominem attacks mixed with some ill-defined alternate vision of the issue at stake, only to be replaced with a Gandhi-esque cocktail, with elements of hippie-flower-power rhetoric on the importance of coming together or some such.

A question that has always intrigued me is why don’t the losers of such political battles come up with the hippie-like calls for unity themselves? Why is the call for unity only the rhetoric of the winners? Ostensibly, unity is not the superficial sounding platitude it seems to be. Unity is a call to normalise the ‘win’ of the political entity calling for unity and to remove or reduce opposition that might stop the political entity from implementing its agenda.

Narrowing our focus to Malta, I find it politically terrifying that President George Vella has called for a conference on national unity. It would be perfectly understandable had the call been issued by our prime minister, wishing to deflect the arrows of those who would seek to wrest political power from his hands. The prime minister, as any other political entity before him, is trying to consolidate his political vision and remove support for the opposition. A perfectly legitimate endeavour for those seeking political power through legitimate means.

A president, on the other hand, should represent the entire spectrum of political entities vying for their political goals, whether it is reserved parking for the barman in front of the każin in an extremely busy road or trying to contest for the highest office of the land. When a president is calling for unity, what he is in effect calling for is the consolidation of the current power structures and the normalisation of the status quo.

A fine situation for those who are currently benefitting from the arrangement but a very poor alternative for those who are suffering because of systems of injustice. How can one endorse a call to political unity when the disempowerment and disenfranchisement from the national conversation is the result of the ‘winners’ manoeuvres?

While I can get behind a call to remove death threats and mockery over things such as disabilities out of our national discourse, I am extremely wary of the president’s affinity for ‘what is Maltese’ and history. Without entering a discussion that will only produce vitriol and bile, it is safe to say that these constructs are highly contested and subject to debate.

Real education will not instill in us some cemented-in-time notion of ‘Malteseness’ but, on the contrary, gives rise to ever more vigorous debate. This can be seen within the Faculty for Social Well-being where our students are trained to field such vigorous debates while remaining civil. After all, it is perfectly acceptable to be completely at odds with a political vision of some shape or form while remaining respectful of the persons or entity one is legitimately mobilising against.

Instead of a unity conference, we should call a conference to raise the quality of our dissent- Andrew Camilleri

Unity, on the other hand, would seek to flatten out any crease or contour present on the Maltese political map, normally at the expense of the underprivileged, and resulting in gain for the privileged who do not wish to disrupt the status quo.

I highly doubt that the president has entertained such considerations when deciding to call for a conference on national unity. On the contrary, the issues that he mentions are important issues that need to be imminently discussed within Maltese political discourse.

The Faculty for Social Well-being has been at the forefront of bringing to light the issues that most would rather they remain undiscussed in the hope that ‘common sense’ or ‘what we have always done’ prevails. This is why framing these issues under the theme of unity feels like an attempt to shield a particular vision of what Maltese society ought to look like from criticism and debate. Such an attempt may possibly yield results in the short-term  but, in the long-term, it is the sowing of seeds for bitter internecine conflict.

May I recommend that, instead of a conference for unity, we call a conference to raise the quality of our dissent. Principled dissent is much better defined than unity and, unlike the latter, empowers all stakeholders to state their piece in an eloquent, articulate and constructive manner.

Maybe, then, some of the common-good solutions, which seem to evade us at every turn, might be unveiled and, inadvertently, we might experience the unity some so desperately crave for.

Andrew Camilleri is a research support officer, Faculty for Social Well-being.