|
Last week somebody wrote to The Times complaining that Xarabank should not have allowed me to sit and challenge the other party leaders on the budget debate. It was amusing to read that my contribution was unfair because I could say things that my rivals dare not. With enemies like that, who needs friends?
On Tuesday I was on Bondi Plus and happened to mention the absurdity of silence on electoral reform. Joe Saliba drew a sheet of paper from his pocket and read out a message from Stephen Cachia, the Greens’ Secretary General in which he advised Mr Saliba that he would advise him of a date for a meeting on the issue once we had the response from the Malta Labour Party.
Joe Saliba was delighted to show that he had sat on his hands on the issue with good reason. He claimed that it was unfair of the Greens to blame the PN because it was the MLP which was at fault. He never seemed to notice that quite apart from the Greens’ justified demands for an even playing field in politics, it is incumbent on him as a Secretary General of one of the country’s major political parties to take the initiative in the face of the country’s changed political reality. He seemed to have no insight to the enormity of his statement.
On Wednesday I was the guest on a radio broadcast hosted by David Agius and Stephan Buontempo and was amused to hear David Agius explain that it was unfair to expect the government to take the initiative on rent law reform if the Labour Party did not show that it would allow such a move. He spelt it out clearly: votes would be lost if the government unilaterally abolished the inheritance of leases.
Our presence as the third party in the country’s political equation has now gone beyond the long established practice of bringing issues onto the country’s political agenda. We are beginning to force a display of the whole absurd underlying structure, the reasons for stagnation in thought, word and deed.
If the Greens had not maintained a sustained campaign on rent law reform, would anybody be talking about it? There are votes to be lost. It is a political hot potato. If the Greens don’t pull it out of the pile nobody would touch it. Even now Nationalist exponents make it clear why they are scared to death of doing anything serious about it. What should be shocking is that they are so in-your-face about it.
If the Greens had not committed themselves to hold a referendum on the issue, would the government have bothered to go through the motions of preparing a study which will be debated next year and become bogged down as the elections looms once more? Only the Greens’ referendum can make a decent reform possible.
The possible moves in our political stalemate are so well known that they are spoken of quite openly, without shame, as if it should all be acceptable. How could an official of what is ostensibly a political party committed to the basic principles of democracy plead such a lame excuse for doing nothing in the face of a political earthquake caused by the 77,000 people who did not vote for the major political parties in the last election. One out of every four people entitled to vote stepped clear of the PN and the MLP in the last election. And the PN will not move unless the MLP moves? Not lift a finger unless they are summoned by the Greens?
How could David Agius so brazenly say that a crucial issue such as rent law reform, a matter which the whole country agrees is very long overdue, can justifiably be ignored by the government because it would risk losing votes in the next elections? The government is not there to ensure that the PN is re-elected but to govern. Is there no concept of good governance? How can a government knowingly shirk its duty so openly and so shamelessly?
The truth is that we all know which way the cookie crumbles. We know it so well that we can be told to our faces and not be shocked, not even be annoyed. The PN does not feel the shame of being in government and being controlled by the opposition on such vital issues which effect the whole economy and place an impossible burden on an unlucky few. We all know that the giants are paralyzed by the system.
I absolutely loved the fellow who complained that it is simply not fair to allow me in the presence of my rivals because I speak my mind freely. They have to skirt the real issues, they have to avoid losing votes while Harry Vassallo just goes ahead and speaks his mind. The Greens don’t need to win over 50% of the vote. It’s unfair that they can have a totally linear policy and stick to it come fair or foul weather.
I could never have made a better case for supporting the Greens myself. In three lines this fellow justified our existence and explained why we have made such spectacular gains. Every passing day more people find the scales falling from their eyes. More and more people begin to realize that they are not very worried about what happens to politicians and political parties whose main concern is their own survival and not good governance.
The silver lining in the economic crisis is that we all realize that we are in the same boat and that the fate of any political party is a non-essential item we can and maybe must jettison. With 25% of the country in revolt it is no longer a remote possibility that the Greens will make it into the next parliament. It is beginning to look like a probability, a welcome probability, whether or not the electoral system is changed.
Our activities without the benefit of parliamentary immunity, a single tax-paid salary and with enormous hurdles in access to the media, have brought about a major change in the political scenario. We have driven our rivals to mouth ideas like sustainable development, quality of life. Today they all say the environment is important. We have obliged them to explain why they have done nothing at all for so many years on so many issues. We have exposed their humiliation before the hunters, the boathouse squatters and every lobby overt and covert that threatens their votes.
The situation has brought embarrassment to people who remain loyal to a traditional political party but whose democratic beliefs and whose respectable insistence on good governance are challenged by what they now can see clearly. Every day we are told by our very rivals that the need for a Green presence in parliament may be more necessary than merely welcome.
It has never been this way before. The country has changed and nobody can put things back the way they were before. Too many people have made up their minds that they want a change for the better.
Dr Vassallo is Chairperson of Alternattiva Demokratika - The Green Party
harry.vassallo@alternattiva.org.mt
|
