Democracy in free-fall

In June 1998 Alfred Sant warned against the risk posed to democracy by a government based on "negotiation between parliamentarians irrespective of decisions made by the Cabinet and the parliamentary group."

Ironically his criticism is more applicable to the current crisis facing Lawrence Gonzi than to his own in 1998.

For back in 1998, the political crisis was brought about by Alfred Sant's decision to allow Dom Mintoff to contest the 1996 electiom on a separate platform and expecting him to remain loyal and silent.

It was the political system inaugurated by GonziPN, which effectively resulted in a coalition between the Prime Minister and single MPs. 

For the message sent to voters in 2008 was that they were not re-electing the Nationalist Party but Lawrence Gonzi. Politics was rendered into a simple act of trust in the leader. The risk was that the moment this trust was eroded, the leader lost legitimacy.

In this guise, a system designed to sacrifice coalition government - in the continental sense - ended up creating an even less stable coalition of individuals acting according to their whims.

The other message sent to the electorate was that they could do so by voting for a number of new candidates, which had little prior experience working in party structures.

Surely the situation was aggravated by the one-seat majority, which gave disproportionate power to each single MP. But while similar one-seat majorities posed no problems to Mintoff in 1971 and Eddie Fenech Adami in 1987, in Gonzi's the situation became untenable.

One major cause of this was the weakening of party loyalties, which left MPs split between those loyal to the leader, and those who felt free to challenge him when they felt betrayed.

In these circumstances the party was only resurrected in times of crisis as when it was forced to take a stance on divorce, when it debated the Arriva debacle and now when faced with Franco Debono's capricious antics.

Instead of acting as an agenda-setter the party was turned in to a gatekeeper for the leadership, and ideological debate only came to the fore after the divorce referendum result.

One may well argue that there was nothing new in this and that the PN was equally if not more conditioned by a towering personality like Eddie Fenech Adami. Still, the party of Eddie Fenech Adami also managed to contain within it conflicting currents ranging from left wing Christian democracy to the traditional right wing.  

Moreover Fenech Adami himself was balanced by the equally towering personality of his erstwhile rival turned lifelong ally Guido De Marco.

It was a system, which ensured that steam was let off internally and not externally, while the party was kept united by the big rallying cries of democracy in the 1980s and EU membership in the 1990s.

Under GonziPN, as the party descended in to the background, debate shifted to the parliamentary arena. Some MPs schooled in the party's left wing like Jean Pierre Farrugia, expressed their dissent in ideological terms but without taking the country to the brink. Others like Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando went a step further, voting against the government in a free vote to pave the way for a historic divorce referendum. 

But it was newcomer Franco Debono who hammered the final nail in the coffin of democracy as we know it, by bringing the government down after he disagreed with a reshuffle.

Not surprisingly, on the other side of the political Rubicon, the same process was taking place as Muscat abolished the post of party general secretary, proclaimed a coalition of moderates and progressives and embarked on attracting star candidates - many of which lack political experience in party structures.

In this scenario we are heading towards a presidential contest in what remains a parliamentary system. The role of political parties as forces mediating between government and citizens has been fatally weakened while the power of the leader and the candidate have grown beyond proportion. Cliques and mavericks are the dual consequence of this set-up.

At the same time, in the absence of real pluralism political parties still have to occupy a political space, which transcends the natural ideological limits of Christian and social democracy. 

While the PN is limited by the real choices it has to make in government (and has now lost even the power of incumbency to make up for this), Labour has been turned into a populist party with a social liberal edge on a few issues but with right-wing overtones on others. The Greens have at least retained ideological consistency,but lack money and resources to make their presence felt.

What Malta clearly needs after this shotgun election, is a real movement in civil society for political change based on an aspiration to live in a continental democracy based on a genuine plurality of strong and ideologically committed parties.

As Germany amply shows political and economic stability is guaranteed by real coalitions between strong parties.

In the absence of real electoral reform based on a realistic threshold, no such prospect is possible.  Expect little discussion on this in the shotgun election. For them, Democracy is not so important after all.