Will elections solve anything? Maybe, but not the real problem

Every now and again I get a vague inkling of what Colonel John 'Hannibal' Smith might have felt like when he drew on his cigar with those immortal words: "I love it when a plan comes together!"

In this case it wasn't exactly my plan that 'came together' - otherwise the ending would have been... oh, let's just say slightly different - but still, how can one fail to appreciate the fruition of someone else's plan, when it succeeds so spectacularly and with such remarkable aplomb... and against the expectations of so many self-styled experts to boot?

Yes, I am talking about Franco Debono's abstention last Thursday; and no, it didn't exactly take me by surprise. How could it have, when our newspaper had predicted that very eventuality all week (and in any case it was one of only three possibilities, so the odds were never exactly astronomical to begin with)? But I admit that I hadn't fully thought the implications through until it actually happened. Now that I have, all I can say is... WOW! (And please note I mean that in the very literal sense of the word: i.e., 'World of Warcraft', with its battle arenas, its power levelling, its PVP and.... erm... never mind, got sort of sidetracked there...)

Anyhow: before Thursday's vote I had assumed - like many others, it would seem - that Franco Debono was just another Nationalist backbencher who had accidentally hit the 'spontaneous political combustion' hot-key. I thought that, failing to get what he wanted - which, depending whose spin you buy into, could be a ministry for himself, or a serious programme of reform for the entire country - he was quite ready to pull the plug on the whole shebang, and go down guns blazing in a glorious cataclysm of chaos and ruin (which is also straight out of WOW territory - such things cannot be coincidences).

However, with hindsight I now realise there was a rather glaring flaw in that entire line of reasoning. For the motion of no confidence in Gonzi's government had not been tabled by Franco Debono... but by the Opposition. And initially I surmised (wrongly, as it happens) that the same Opposition would have at least tried to obtain some form of guarantee that Debono would actually support the bill before it was tabled... and not afterwards, as we now know was the case.

From this angle, Labour's motion starts to look like an aspect of the plan that Debono himself had failed to anticipate. Perhaps he had forgotten that such a thing as 'the Opposition' even existed... and let's be honest: who can really blame him? Or perhaps he thought - as I would have thought in his place - that the Labour Party would play its hand with a tiny bit more finesse... (rather than just flinging its cards onto the table with a defiant grunt, as it did this week).

But no: it seems that Labour simply assumed that the whole point behind Debono's tantrums was all along to get rid of the PN and pave the way for a new Labour government instead... and to be fair, this view was evidently shared by all but the more astute and less manifestly unhinged/blinkered PN apologists, too.

And yet... how can I put this? That is a truly, madly, deeply and astonishingly naïve interpretation of events... for a wide array of spectacularly obvious reasons, starting with:

1) It doesn't make sense.

Think about it. If all Franco Debono wanted to do was topple Gonzi and install Muscat in his place... well, he could have done that at any point in the last four years. After all, last Thursday was hardly the first time that Lawrence Gonzi had lost his majority in the House. It happened twice before in the last few months alone: first with the divorce referendum bill last March... when two government backbenchers (neither of them named Franco Debono, incidentally) voted in line with the opposition; and next, when Debono abstained from the vote of no confidence in Austin Gatt last November. Gonzi's government has therefore been visibly teetering on the brink of a precipice for almost a whole year. Was an Opposition motion of no confidence really needed to push it over the edge? Hardly....

Besides: if Debono repeatedly passed up opportunity after opportunity to bring down Gonzi's government, it is pretty damn obvious (to me, anyway) that there must be slightly more to his agenda than... erm... bringing down Gonzi's government. And this brings me to....

2) Franco Debono's agenda

Strange as this may sound in a political scenario bereft of ideas, vision or talent ... Debono does actually have a 'cunning plan'. And it includes some very basic and necessary legislation, too: a party financing law, for instance, among other important checks and balances to ward against corruption and cronyism. There is also a revision of the judicial system to address serious, endemic problems (too complex to go into here).

In practice, however, not a single one of these goals can realistically be achieved from any position outside the House of Representatives... as can be attested by parties like AD, which have been making the exact same demands since around 1989... without any hope of success.

This because, in classic Catch-22 fashion, to change the law you must first get yourself elected to parliament - but the law is set up in such a way as to make it all but impossible to actually get into parliament (in order to change the law, to catch the spider to swallow the fly, etc.).

Franco Debono doesn't  actually have this problem, because... duuuh... he already is in parliament. And this in turn raises the inevitable (and bleedingly obvious, if you ask me) fly in the PN's ongoing anti-Franco ointment. By overthrowing Gonzi's government and installing Muscat's instead, Franco Debono would instantaneously consign his own programme of reform to the scrapheap of history... while also setting off the countdown to his own spectacular self-destruction.

Now honestly, you tell me: why the hell should he even contemplate doing something so utterly self-defeating and... for want of a better word... daft?

No seriously: I'd like an answer, please.

OK, now let us look at the same scenario from the point of view of other people, who actually think the reforms Franco is proposing are a good idea. In case you hadn't already noticed, that category happens to include people like... me, who, in my own little way and from my own little corner, have been harping on much the same issues for years.

From this vantage point the same overall question arises. What good can possibly ensue from toppling the present administration, if these all-important laws are not pushed through parliament in time to be binding on the incoming replacement government?

None that I can see. What I can see, on the contrary, are serious problems looming dead ahead. For if an election is held at any point before those laws are enacted, the only change we can realistically expect involves the identity of the people who get to perpetrate injustice on a more or less daily basis. Remember all those things we constantly complain about regarding the present government? Its propensity for nepotism, corruption, unaccountability, etc? Well, none of that will have gone away, because the legal framework that enables it to exist (and evade detection and/or reproof) will still be there, only serving a new bunch of political masters instead.

And yes, perhaps it would take a little while for the new government to reach the present levels of malodorous rot - but you can rest assured that eventually we will find ourselves right back exactly where we are today, under an equally unregulated regime that traditionally makes no distinction at all between its own short-term benefit, and (ha, ha, hee, hee) the "national interest".

This means that the best-case scenario - and I'll leave you to work out the worst for yourselves - is that a bunch of PL cronies will now gorge themselves at  the government trough, to the exclusion of their PN counterparts. Wait a few more years and, hey presto! We'll be back with the PN cronies ruling the roost. Then it will be Labour again. Then PN. Then... Zzzzzz.

So no: all things considered, my interpretation of last Thursday's vote is rather different from everything I've read about it so far. I think the Opposition's motion was actually an unnecessary and unwanted intrusion that merely got in the way of Franco Debono's otherwise well-laid plains... which up until that point were running pretty smoothly, too. He had already arm-twisted Gonzi into effecting at least one minor plank in his reform programme: the separation of justice and home affairs ministry. And while his reaction to the resulting Cabinet reshuffle predictably opened him up to criticism on the basis of personal ambition, etc. - because it seems that 'personal ambition' among politicians is suddenly a crime - it also made abundantly clear that Franco Debono would not hesitate to burst Gonzi's bubble altogether... unless he was given clear guarantees that his programme of reform would be implemented. 

That, very clearly, is the real motivation spurring Debono's otherwise naked, self-promoting agenda. That is the goal he has evidently set out to achieve, or perish in the attempt. Political blackmail, you say? Oh, absolutely. Blackmail is after all the only language that Maltese politicians have ever spoken or understood. And granted, Debono may well have other, less-than-admirable motives pricking him on... but who doesn't?

And besides... none of this changes the fact that his aims themselves are worthwhile, laudable and above all eminently achievable. They are in fact what anyone who hasn't been blinded by the tribalism of partisan politics would instantly recognise as fundamentally sound political objectives. And they're right there, too, staring us all in the face, within easy grasp. All we have to do is reach out and frigging grasp them. And this brings me to...

3) Opportunity knocks

By abstaining last Thursday, Franco Debono has opened up a window of opportunity that could conceivably make his immediate objective (party financing law) become reality within a very short time. Unlike all others who have clamoured for this law in the past - AD, for instance, or even this newspaper - he has physically carved out for himself a platform from which he can actually force it through Parliament against his Prime Minister's will. Now, I ask you all. Is this madness? Is this betrayal? Is this... stupidity? Or is it is it a remarkable plan that - possibly without Debono himself even realising quite how - managed to spectacularly come together in a way that would have bowled over even Colonel John 'Hannibal' Smith?

But alas! That window of opportunity opened by Debono - now gaping as wide as it can ever be hoped to gape - will not remain open for long. Soon it will snap shut altogether... and the people now crowing for an early election at all costs (not, I concede, without perfectly valid reasons) are merely hastening its demise.

An election now, before these important reforms are actually put into place, would not actually solve a goddamn thing in this country. But after those reforms are effected? When there is a serious legal structure in place to regulate political parties and force them all to fall in line with the rest of us lesser mortals? Oh, it would make all the difference in the world...