The two-party system has failed. Get over it

You know you’ve hit a raw nerve in this country when supporters of both parties start calling you names. Not ‘responding to your arguments’, mind you. Just calling you names, which is the surest sign they wouldn’t actually recognise an argument if one just happened to sodomise them in a dark alley (as proper arguments tend to do).

Having said that, I was also surprised by the sheer number of people (many of whom I don’t know, and don’t know me) who reacted positively to my article last Wednesday, under the headline ‘Wanted: a quantum leap forward’. I think I can guess why, too. 

In that article, I pointed out how Malta’s endemic two-party system has utterly failed. Or, to be more mathematically precise: how it has actually succeeded… but only in creating a situation in which failure is the only possible outcome, every single time.

Under normal circumstances, I would describe that as an interesting paradox, and no more. Circumstances are however less than ordinary. The situation I described above has now become so transparent, so blatant, so ridiculously ‘in your face’… that it is now visible to absolutely everyone – especially the ones who are only ever capable of ‘thinking’ along the blinkered dynamics of two-party logic. 

Those are in fact the ones who can see it most clearly of all… and they are naturally the ones who hate me most for pointing it out. Nationalists call me a ‘Labour apologist’. Labourites call me a ‘Nationalist stooge’. And of course, each and every one them knows perfectly well that it is simply impossible for any one person to be both those things at the same time.

Already, the ‘logic’ of the two-party system can be seen to have failed. It’s right there, staring you all in the face: the word ‘FAIL’, spelt out in large letters, right across our country’s political divide.

But let’s stay with it for a while, and see where it takes us. Why do people resort to insulting people like me (and, to be fair, all the others who have been making the same points in the last week: I won’t take all the credit myself, far from it) if not because… they know we are right?

Yes, indeed. Right: the one thing the real party apologists and stooges have ever been in their entire lives. Because ‘being right’, in this context, is a position you can only ever find yourself in once you remove those goddamn partisan blinkers once and for all. And that is something most people just can’t ever bring themselves to do.

No matter, though. Even with the childish blinkers still clamped firmly to their heads… the party stooges still know I’m right when I say that Nationalist corruption stinks just as bad as Labour corruption. They know I’m right when I say that Labour betrayed this country’s aspirations, by capitalising on a genuine thirst for change in the most cynical, unforgivable way possible... i.e, by surfing the wave of national discontent, just to ensure that all the goodies would start flowing in their direction for a change.

They also know I’m right each time I argue that the Nationalist Opposition just doesn’t give a shit about ‘good governance’ (never did, never will)… and they even know why I’m right about it, too. The reason is as simple as it is predictable. It’s because the Nationalist Party equates the adjective ‘good’ with ‘Nationalist’… and ‘bad’ with Labour. 

Yes, folks, it really is as simple as that. As long as the PN is in power, things are ‘good’ (regardless how they actually govern); if it’s Labour, it’s bad. 

That is why people like Daphne Caruana Galizia left no stone unturned to expose the truly execrable Konrad Mizzi/Keith Schembri quagmire… yet when Austin Gatt and (especially) Ninu Zammit were exposed over entirely analogous dealings, the same Daphne Caruana Galizia used her position and influence to minimise and pooh-pooh the story… just as she minimised and pooh-poohed every stinking revelation of Nationalist corruption since she started writing articles in 1992.

Yet in the case of Ninu Zammit, the stink was even worse. The former Minister of Public Works (Lorry Sant’s old portfolio, remember?) opened his Swiss bank account in 2004, and later transferred it to the British Virgin Islands... as notorious a tax haven as Panama. Thanks to Wikileaks, we now know it contained just over three million euros. So here’s the question Daphne Caruana Galizia never asked: where did that money actually come from? How much tax was paid on it? How was it actually earned?

It is for this reason that otherwise intelligent, capable people like Roberta Metsola Triccas Tedesco are unwise to post YouTube videos of mass meetings addressed by Eddie Fenech Adami from the distant 1980s. That was a time when ‘we’ (myself included) looked to the PN to deliver us from the shocking corruption of pre-1987 Labour. Very emotional stuff… not the sort of legacy I would be in a hurry to squander right now.

Yet we must now put emotion aside, and take a serious second look at that legacy once and for all. Can we still argue that the PN ‘rescued democracy’ in 1987… when a Nationalist Cabinet minister somehow amassed three million euros over the next 15 years, without ever giving a clear account of how or from where that money was acquired? 

Personally, I think it’s time to re-evaluate those assumptions. Did the Eddie Fenech Adami era really put an end to the Lorry Sant phase? Or did it simply redirect the flow of corruption, just as Joseph Muscat seems to have done in 2013?

And what is happening right now, even as the reality of the situation is increasingly visible to everyone? The Labour apologists are in full damage limitation mode – incapable of seeing how severely they have let honest, genuine people down – and the Nationalist stooges can barely even disguise their erections at the sudden prospect of an election campaign in which they actually have an outside chance of winning.

Well, this is precisely the crux of the matter. My argument last Wednesday was that a PN victory at the next election will not solve Malta’s endemic corruption problems at all. It will only perpetuate the failed two-party system, to nobody’s benefit. 

The stooges and the apologists know that I am 100% correct to point this out – which reminds me: did I already mention the fact that I’m 100% right? I tend to forget little details like that, you know – and… well, what do you know? They hate my guts for it.

What they evidently don’t know is… that’s absolutely all fine by me. Wouldn’t have it any other way, in fact. And the reason couldn’t be simpler. 

The alternative to being insulted by that sort of person is to be praised by them. And as far as I’m concerned… THAT is the real insult. To be ‘approved’ by the same sheep-like imbeciles who would flock to a Nationalist mass meeting to show support for one sickeningly corrupt party over another equally corrupt party… for no other reason than the warped two-party ‘logic’ outlined above.

No, thank you very much. I will have none of it, ever again. But of course, that only raises the question – now being asked all over the internet, as the kind of social media bullying we all got a taste of in 2008 – of whom to actually vote for.

Hmmm. What a dilemma. Let’s think about it rationally for a second, shall we? Sound of mental cog-wheels turning, etc…

EUREKA! I’ve got it! In the next election, I shall vote for… drums rolling… MYSELF! Yes indeed. What a fabulous idea… couldn’t have come up with a better one if I tried (even though I did try… and managed, too… without even trying too hard.)

But why would I want to do a thing like that, I hear you ask? Well, for starters… there are no other candidates who actually share my opinions. So for the first time in my life, I’d be voting for someone who could actually represent me in parliament, without automatically being an irredeemable hypocrite.  

For seconds: Malta’ electoral system (though butchered beyond recognition) is actually all about electing individual candidates, not parties at all. Now: remember what I said about the two-party system having failed? Well, then… why not make it a failed 20,000 party system instead? 

Everyone out there who is disillusioned with the abysmal political morass our country has been incapable of extricating itself from since Independence… how many of you are there, anyway? A good few thousand, I would guess. How about we all register ourselves as independent candidates at the next election? All of us. Heck, if the regulations permit, feel free to register your dogs and cats, too (look on the bright side… those, at least, will certainly never be caught with Panamanian companies, or bank accounts in the British Virgin Islands. Of that much you can rest assured).

And yes, I know what you might be thinking on a more practical level… none of us would ever get elected. It’s a waste of time. And you’d probably be right there, too (let’s face it, it can’t be just me being right all the time: wouldn’t be fair). 

But then, think of the alternative.

The alternative is to carry on voting for a system we all all know has always failed, and which can never, ever, EVER hope to succeed in future.

Not much of a choice when you look at it that way, now is it?