A number of things in the past few weeks have finally convinced me that what I’ve feared all along is really true. This country is basically done for. The end is nigh. There is no hope left, and we are all doomed. Doomed, I tell you…

What, all still there? Haven’t packed your bags and run to the hills yet? Oh, OK, I suppose you all want me to tell you what these “things” actually are, to have finally persuaded me of the inevitability of impending disaster. Alright, here goes.
The first was a small news item earlier this month, about how Joseph G. Galea, the Auditor-General, is to remain in office despite the fact that his second term expired last June.
Granted: it’s not as apocalyptic a scenario as you may have been led to expect by my “Armageddon-outa-here” intro. And before proceeding any further, please bear with me for all the usual boring disclaimers. I have nothing against Joseph G. Galea. In fact, by all accounts – and believe it or not, that pun was purely unintentionally – he is little short of a Super Civil Servant: an old school man of integrity, liked and respected by one and all… the sort of person who might one day even have a State college named after him, if only he can get himself canonised by Pope Benedict XVI (a distinct possibility, by the way, considering how liberally they’re dishing those halos out at the Vatican these days…)

So as far as I am concerned, the Auditor General can carry on generally auditing till the cows come home, and the goats go on holiday in their stead. We’re all very happy to have him where he is. But there is a tiny, tiny snag.
The Constitution of Malta – you know, that compendium of medieval beliefs that everyone seems hell bent on pumping full of private fantasies and public fetishes – permits no man, affable or otherwise, to serve more than two terms in succession as Auditor-General.
It says it loud, it says it clear. It even shouts it in our ear: “The Auditor General shall hold office for a period of five years from the date of his appointment and shall be eligible for reappointment for one further period of five years.” (Constitution of Malta, 108/3a)

So regardless how I feel in the matter, and regardless how nice a guy Joseph G. Galea undeniably is, his re-appointment to a third term as Auditor-General can only be described as unconstitutional. And to his great credit he immediately understood this, and questioned the legality of his own investiture.
This is where everything goes slightly awry. Joseph G. Galea’s reappointment may not be covered by any legal provision whatsoever, but in practice it is not actually illegal. For contrary .to widespread popular perception, the legality or otherwise of any decision in this country has nothing to do with the law. Instead, it has everything to do with whether the two political parties currently occupying Parliament think it is expedient or not. In a nutshell: if both parties agree to simply ignore a law, then that law simply no longer applies, full-stop. And guess what? Everybody in the country is perfectly happy to simply accept this insane state of affairs without so much as a murmured doubt.

Pause for a second to consider the implications, and perhaps you will understand why visions of Breughel’s Triumph of Death momentarily dance in my head.
The same chapter (108) tells us that the Auditor General can only be appointed by a two-thirds majority. Once appointed, the Auditor General can only serve two terms. So what happens if – as occurred earlier this month – no two-thirds majority is reached, and the incumbent has already served his two terms? Answer: Constitution is duly flushed down the toilet, and the two parties dictate the law instead.
One way of looking at this anomaly is that the great legal brains responsible for the Independence Constitution in 1964 were evidently not "great" enough to envisage the above (extraordinarily predictable) turn of events. But there is another way of looking at it: that the great legal brains in question unwittingly built into the Constitution of Malta an entire mechanism whereby any of its provisions can simply be ignored at will.
For the above anomaly is not an accident: far from it. It is the direct result of an entire national mindset which presupposes Members of Parliament to be above the law to begin with. Consequently, should any Constitutional provision prove impracticable, it only becomes an issue if the two parties occupying parliament fail to reach an agreement. If they do reach an agreement – as they did in the case of the Auditor General – then… well… there isn’t any problem at all.

Need another example? There are several. Try the celebrated “Neutrality Clause” for size. Here, the naïvety with which the issue was mishandled appears almost comical with hindsight. For one thing, the bit about Neutrality (which is only a small part of the 1986 amendment – the rest is all about electoral reform) clearly alludes to “Two Superpowers”… one of which was destined to spontaneously combust before our eyes a mere three years after that clause was inserted in 1986.
The result is much the same as our national propensity to worship both God and Mammon at the same altar. We get all the benefits of neutrality (which are all entirely theoretical, by the way, but I suppose it’s still better than a scud missile in the teeth…), while in practice we still welcome US navy vessels, fresh from active combat in Iraq and elsewhere, into our harbours.
I believe the Maltese expression for this fine state of hypocrisy is “gibnieha zewg”. In more senses than just one.

For the same 1986 amendment has also left us with a positively bizarre situation, whereby any party which wins a majority of votes, but not of seats, is automatically “compensated” with enough extra seats to make up for the short-fall.
Excuse me, but… what kind of nonsense is this? And why, in a country so full of legal and political experts, did nobody ever ask the most immediately pertinent question: who, exactly, do the unelected occupants of these “phantom seats” represent?
“Nobody” is the only honest answer to that question, though the genius who originally dreamed up this anomalous compromise will doubtless argue that the artificial seat majority is at least a reflection of the popular vote.
This kind of reasoning may have worked to avoid a bloodbath in 1987… which to be fair was the overwhelming concern at the time. But just look at how short-sighted the entire mentality has proved to be. Just look at how the amendment itself had to be re-amended 20 years later, when it became apparent that the “phantom seats” mechanism simply wouldn’t work, in a situation where two parties occupied parliament without either enjoying an absolute majority of votes.

Can you believe it? An entire generation of seasoned politicians – including both Mintoff and Fenech Adami, who were born and raised in a Malta characterised by multi-party representation – proved incapable in 1986 of foreseeing a possible future in which any third party could garner enough votes to deprive either PN or MLP of the all-important “50%+1” equation.
But even more remarkable is the “final solution” to this absurdity, announced with much fanfare by the Justice Minister this week. Rather than iron out this thundering sin of omission by simply introducing a national threshold at the expense of constituency quotas, what did the two parties do? Simple: They added another half-baked proviso to the existing half-baked Constitutional measure, thus ensuring that the “phantom seats” mechanism would still work, even in the case of a relative majority government.
I suppose it’s a tiny improvement over PM Eddie Fenech Adami’s approach to the issue in 1998… which was basically to blackmail the electorate with the threat of a potentially lost EU membership bid. But it remains a patchwork, piecemeal and utterly amateur political intervention, aimed only at preserving the status quo for two parties which are now clearly in cahoots.

This, it seems is the legacy of Mintoff and Fenech Adami: two politicians whom we very unwisely elevated to the status of demigods. In both cases – neutrality and bogus, phantom unrepresentative Parliamentary seats – it’s a case of things being legally acceptable only because they are acceptable to the two parties and their superhuman leaders. And as always, the fault is entirely our own, for not having harpooned these megalomaniac “mexxeja” of ours as they swam up there in the stratosphere, and winched them slowly back down to Planet Earth where they (should) belong.

One more example, and that’s it. I’m off on the next rickety boat for Sicily.
Party-financing. Have you noticed? What started off as an initiative to instil much-needed accountability in the thorny issue of party funding, has suddenly metamorphosed into the umpteenth two-party exercise in milking the entire system for their own private benefit.
Complain about undeclared contributions in return for political favours, and what does the PM do? Why, he sends you the bill for his own campaign, that’s what. He expects the taxpayer, no less, to pay for his party’s excesses. And if you argue against this state of affairs, the answer you will get is that both the PN and MLP are in agreement. So what’s left to argue? If they-who-are-above-the-law have reached a cosy understanding between them, you and I have little option but to bow our heads and reach for our chequebooks.

Or maybe not. For it seems both the PN and MLP have overlooked a tiny but rather important detail. They are not just political parties, but also commercial entities in their own right. They own and operate newspapers, radio and television stations… which means that, as an employee of MediaToday Ltd, my taxes under the above scenario would go towards financing a rival media organisation.
I was under the impression that EU competition law would have a thing or two to say about that. But then, if the two parties agree not to implement that particular Directive, then what is a poor, long-suffering taxpayer to do?
There is also an ideological point to bear in mind. I am quite frankly disgusted by the appalling standards of both Net and One TV, especially when it comes to the news (an issue which, as a journalist, concerns me closely). To be perfectly honest – and serious, for a change – I would much rather go to prison than subsidise either of those awful stations to the tune of a single centime.

But by the time the new party financing laws come out, I would already long have drowned in the deep blue Mediterranean sea, alongside all those other desperate migrants. So I guess the civil disobedience campaign will have to start without me…