“Stop dreaming. The old, big, traditional parties are here to stay. No one wins against them. They will outlast any man, woman or newborn babe.”
That’s roughly the reaction I get every time I say that the parties in power and in opposition have had their day. It seems we, or most of us, feel that, even if the politics they play at are outdated and not adding any value to our lives, the Nationalist Party and the Labour Party are the best we can hope for.
If dinosaurs still roamed, they obviously would be terrifying us all. We’d have stuck to our caves, scared and dreamless. We fear the political parties in the same way. The two-party hegemony which has ruled Malta for 60 years is not intrinsically wrong. But this system has transformed democracy in Malta into a travesty.
As long as there was the chance, the least chance, of the ruling party losing power, this meant both parties acted as a check on each other.
Right now, one party is there seemingly forever, its power and popularity growing. Even in its long stretch in power, the PN never, or rarely, enjoyed a very strong majority and always contested elections knowing it could be toppled.
This hardly made saints or total gentlemen of its MPs but it reined them in somewhat from ill-treating the institutions and the people. The PN had their share – a good sad share – of scandals but they were wary of losing the people’s backing. Today, the more the Labour Party debases itself into what should be unacceptable territory, the more the people back it.
In this strange situation, the other party, the party that should be sailing into unheard of national approval, turns more into a sick joke. The PN is befuddled, bereft of ideas and ideals, basically bankrupt and happy enough sitting in its opposition patch. Knowing, and quite satisfied with the thought, that it is not an alternative government.
The PN is a blot on the political landscape, a withered, wizened, sad travesty of a political force.
In this situation, the country is slowly – or actually quite quickly – slithering into a cosy takeover by Labour, the inner sanctum of cronies, people of trust and other assorted grabbers.
The two-party hegemony which has ruled Malta for 60 years has transformed democracy in Malta into a travesty- Victor Calleja
Robert Abela sounds as if he is the country’s best – or first-ever – custodian of all things good. And all this while the ones fattening their pockets continue transforming the country into a dusty, dingy, treeless collection of lifeless cubicles. Our air quality keeps deteriorating, our institutions keep getting stifled, our finances worsening, yet Abela and his merry men in government act with total impunity.
In such dire circumstances, I still cherish a sliver of hope. I still believe the country has a way out. The people might be in a trance, mesmerised by the glitz, taken in by limitless propaganda that life in Malta has never been better. I dream of a new future.
When Volodymyr Zelensky, Emmanuel Macron, Podemos and Beppe Grillo moved from a dream to a force that challenged the traditional parties they were laughed at and they had more than a few mountains to climb. Yet, climb they did and they confounded their detractors, the reality checkers.
I am – far from it, in fact – not saying they all were or will be successes in power, will be or had a good attitude to power. But, out of nothing, against all odds, success is possible.
New ideas can, even in impossible-to-imagine scenarios, become reality. New people, new groupings, new blood can find new ways, new avenues, new beliefs in solidarity.
Challenging the status quo of dependence on development is not an easy task. Coming up with new answers to environmental issues, to fight obsolete ways of education, changing our farming and the ways we consume food are tough choices. They are also impossible goals for dinosaurs, for political parties that have been in power too long and are delivering us into self-destruction.
Dreams are possible even when living in a nightmare.
Victor Calleja is a former publisher.