The European Union: An opportunity for voters

Being part of the EU will bring many unexpected benefits to our society. We are all suffering immensely from the decision of the Labour Party to oppose EU membership, notwithstanding popular mandates to pursue such a course, because few of us dedicated our full and committed attention to the EU challenge. We waited and waited for the political games to be over. And now we have a very short time to change our whole outlook on things, change many of structures and practices, change our mentality, and dare I say, our idiosyncracies.

One such idiosyncrasy is the habit of politicians to look at our population as two groups, the left and the right with a few floaters in between. Each party addresses and speaks to the group perceived to support it and demonstrates little respect or attention to the other half. We have had to live with a divided society for years and years. Today there is greater education and while education liberates citizens from this kind of manipulation, the effects are still to be seen.

The same idiosyncrasy reflects itself in the population which feels it forms part of one group and only listens to the speakers of that group, resulting in two groups of people with a different set of truths about our history, our strengths, our weaknesses and generally our position in the world.

The fact that we have two political television stations is most unfortunate as we perpetuate this situation which is most counterproductive. It impedes development in this country, physical, intellectual and spiritual and that is why we suffer from unbelievable mediocrity in so many things we do. This permeates our lives and we run at half steam all the time and when we have a leader of the opposition who is negative we try to run with the brakes pressed down! This attitude has even caught the attention of international observers and if the press is quoting correctly, Pat Cox, president of the European parliament, even used our attitude to express how people should not act! How embarrassing!

Now, for the first time we have an opportunity to vote for candidates for the European parliament. What is so novel about these elections is that although each candidate has a political badge, each candidate will be contesting a seat from Malta as a whole.

This means that the most popular candidates across the whole country will get elected. For the first time in our history we will all be voting for all candidates and each candidate cannot possibly limit his attention only to his own political support group, although the political parties are trying their best to force them (their own and the opposing ones) to do this.

For the first time the Labour candidate who manages to garner most Nationalist votes will do better than the candidate who alienates Nationalist voters. Likewise, if a Labour candidate speaks in a manner disrespectful of Nationalist sentiments he will do worse than the one who is moderate and appeals to both sides. This is as it should be and in this way candidates will represent us all, irrespective of whether we are Nationalists or Labour.

All voters should have a say who all the MPs are as through their actions they all affect our livelihood whether they are in government or in opposition.

Our electoral system, which does not allow Nationalists to influence which Labour MPs (and vice-versa) get elected, is stupid, especially in a small society like ours. Our system encourages mediocrity, inefficiency, corruption and low standards among candidates because getting elected is almost a deal with a couple of thousand of your party's supporters as opposed to rising to a standard of vision, creativity, energy and behaviour which impresses the whole constituency, if not the country. In the dark Mintoff days, it even counted how violent you were with the opposition and its supporters; that would gain you admiration and votes!

Indeed, in my view our national parliament should be elected on the basis of Malta being one district similar to that now applicable to the EP elections. We should be able to vote first for the party, then for the candidates of each party. The party with most votes governs and the seats between the parties are distributed proportionately. The most popular candidates in each party then get allocated the seats each party has won.

That will reduce division, engender mutual respect, block extremists and bring about stability to our country as it will not allow any candidate to play on hate and manipulation because such a candidate would alienate the whole of the opposite group. Anyone looking at local politics today sees the obvious need of the opposition to oppose and cause tensions because otherwise it can be perceived as ineffective. This spawns artificial tensions, argument without substance and appeals to the most basic tribal instincts. Having one district over the whole country with each political group having to impress the whole country on its ability to promote the best opportunities for Malta as a whole will reverse these elements.

Maybe then our politicians might get their priorities right. This approach will also allow us to reduce the size of our parliament which is disproportionate to our real needs. One MP for every 10,000 persons should be enough. Each MP can be paid more and be a full timer, encouraging greater professionalism and substance. Now that there are local councils our MPs should start to think and act nationally and long term and not operate on the level of specific individual issues and turn them into national crises.

The EP elections will result in people cross voting for the first time without hurting their party's chances and in all likelihood there will be more people voting for independents and moderates than for extremists and stalwarts of one party only. I look forward to voting for the all the right candidates in each party (the ones with a vision for Malta and having an intelligent outlook) and I hope that we will choose the best representatives for our country as a whole, even when we choose those of different political views.

This is one benefit the EU will bring with it and let us hope we will appreciate it and let the benefits slip down into the national level. Let us hope that we will not be manipulated by the political parties to think there is some benefit in voting only for the candidates of our own party instead of the best of all parties.

Let us now see whether the political parties will try to impose their idiosyncracies on the EP elections rather than allow our mediocrity and inward looking nature to fall away as we become citizens of a bigger world.

Already we are seeing a ridiculous propaganda stance being adopted by Net TV over the position of the Labour candidates just because there are still differing views on the EU within the Labour Party, disregarding the enormous effort it must have taken them to modify the party's stand on the EU. Some editorial positions and strategies being taken by Net TV are an insult to one's intelligence and we are already seeing the MLP reverting to their old unsustainable positions. Strategic gains for the PN but a disaster for our country, because we need to work together not against each other.

We are again seeing the MLP pathetically trying to ignore Malta's entry into the EU by treating the accession day proper as a normal May 1, opening up once again the boring debate over which days are important in Malta's history. This is again playing to the extremists in the tribe, at the lowest possible intellectual level given the momentous period of history we are in at the moment - for good or for bad! This will lead to the other tribe wasting untold energies and our funds to make sure that the point is made that May 1 is the most important day in our history, this year and in future years! Politicians need to realise that they - their dominance, their lack of respect for our intelligence, their divisiveness and their short term and inward looking political strategies - constitute the country's real problem.

The problem is so great that it is difficult to imagine where one could start. The EP elections, I think, will be a catalyst for change as we are going to have to look at the alternative model of necessary national teamwork (at EU level) in operation and hopefully that will teach something to the national players. I have however three small suggestions to make towards a more unified national approach.

The first is, let us have a referendum on the national day, after which we will celebrate the day together. The second, we need to amend the Constitution to prohibit politicians from being elected President of the Republic. In this way, the President will act as a counter-balancing agent in the country. I am one of those who disagreed with the election of Eddie Fenech Adami as President for the simple reason that, while he will no doubt carry out his functions excellently, he simply cannot open his mouth on anything relevant to our lives, more so than any other previous President. As a Prime Minister he was the one who managed to bring about major steps towards reconciliation and his attempts at encouraging unity were noteworthy, but now as soon as he suggests a national unified approach the MLP officers will be defensive, assume he is referring to them and object to his meddling in politics! Even when his message is right and necessary and identical to what past Presidents have said. The more we need the EU example to be demonstrated as a good model, the less he will be able to demonstrate it! He will be like our Archbishop who is constrained in the way he speaks because of the faults of historical precedents.

The third suggestion is for an amendment to the Constitution to eliminate the formal divide between the government and the opposition. The amendment should cater for a "majority" and a "minority" (semantics, but an important shift from a mandate to oppose) and lay down that the minority in parliament would be given specific institutional functions. In this way, both would be expected to work as a team.

Let us use our head and vote for the right people, whatever their party is. Let us vote for the best persons in each party, those with a broad national vision for Malta, those capable of seeing when their parties are wrong and able to say so openly and unambiguously and to maintain their stand, even if going against their party's views. Otherwise, we will be electing puppets and have only more of the same.