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While the country grits its teeth to meet 2005 and is joined in resentment over 2004, the Green Party has much to be thankful for. Our success in the European Parliament elections has been a watershed in our 15 year history. We have emerged from the years of endurance and must prepare for the years of responsibility.
In the oppressive gloom following a second austerity budget being the harbinger of another and yet another in our common future, the Greens’ success marks a major change for the better which goes beyond our own cause for celebration. It is true that our support has grown to 23,000 leaping from 0.7 per cent in 2003 to 9.3 per cent in 2004 but what is of greater consequence is the fact that 25 per cent of the country refused to vote for our rivals.
The Labour Party garnered 14,000 fewer votes than it managed in its harrowing 2003 defeat. The Nationalist Party plunged by 44,000 votes. A massive 77,000 people said ‘no’ to the system. It is unquestionably a tectonic shift in a country which is one of the most highly politicised in the world. Everything points to a major change.
Detachment from the status quo is only the first step. It must not become a full scale withdrawal but the start towards true ownership of the country’s institutions. There are many positive signs already: economic difficulties have made us all realise that we sink or swim together; the participation in stakeholder consultation process prior to EU accession has whetted the appetite of civil society organisations for a greater share in decision making. The fact that they are currently ignored only adds to their drive to be present and to have their say.
Clearly the shift to a new reality will not happen overnight: the gains that must be made will have to be fought for and won. The every-man-for-himself culture will not fade away just because we might wish for it, but it will become ever clearer that success comes from working together. Some of us will remain locked into local competition but many will find that reality has locked in and that competition in the global village will require new skills, a capacity for cooperation and synergy creation.
Our political culture, geared to produce the exclusion of half the country all the time, will become ever more clearly an intolerable extravagance. As the months roll by we will become ever more aware that this political attitude has infiltrated every aspect of our lives and that we must shed it to survive.
There is no way that the country can succeed in the challenge it has taken on if it persists in discriminating between red, blues and greens in every aspect of life. More than the much advertised economic challenge, the tsunami we face is cultural. We have to shift from a lack of trust to risk-taking. Talent, expertise and capability must come before proof of party loyalty. Unnecessary political attrition which prevents confidence building will be seen to be the threat it really is.
Quite apart from the challenge of reining in the deficit and converging with the Euro without provoking casualties, we face the awesome task of dismantling the client-patron system which creates distortions and inefficiencies we can no longer afford. We have already wasted precious decades dragging the ball and chain of political expediency and internecine feuding.
The current complaint against excessive bureaucracy will develop into a better articulated demand for systems that work, for everybody, in the same manner, all the time. The long term thinking needed to frame them and to maintain them rigorously require a major shift away from the exigencies of parties that require a 50 per cent plus1 majority at the next election.
Politics will always remain the art of achieving a workable and acceptable compromise between divergent interests but the electoral interests of political parties must be seen to take second place to the long term demands of the country as a whole. We are becoming a country. The personal identification with the political party of our ancestors is beginning to lose its grip on our psyche as we realise the need for a national common ground.
The Greens’ project for 2005 will be pushing through the long-awaited reform of the rent laws. It is a matter which goes far beyond the landlord-tenant relationship and the 60 year expropriation imposed by political paralysis in a majoritarian system. It affects the spiralling cost of property which in turn affects the cost of labour and the cost of our tourism product. We are pushing ourselves out of our natural markets because our major political parties cannot bring themselves to do what they know is necessary.
It is also an exercise in cross party direct democracy. For the first time since it was written into our Constitution, the Maltese will be exercising their right to oblige their parliament to change the law. It is an invitation to public ownership of the legislative process quite apart from any party loyalty. It is an act of liberation. As the Maltese take ownership of the highest institution in the land, they also take on responsibility, directly and individually.
This is the Green project for the creation of a common ground. It is the foundation of our long term political thinking. Our every action is aimed at the optimisation of the use of our resources: to get the most out of them while ensuring that their future potential is not jeopardised. We expect to participate not to dominate. We will give out utmost and drive others to compete in these terms.
We are fed up of documenting lost opportunities and recording Malta as a could-have-been paradise. Our increased support allows us to go several steps further and lunge at our dream of bringing the country to fire on all cylinders for the first time. We know that we cannot do it alone. We know that all our rivals must be brought to the same frame of mind: that our task as political parties is not to win an election but to maximise our contribution to a common project.
Ironically the sharing of sovereignty through EU membership is more likely to allow us a sense of ownership of institutions than independence ever gave us. As EU citizens we all expect to be equal to every other EU citizen and to benefit from the union’s possibilities. We appear to have acquired ownership of EU institutions before we have acquired ownership of national institutions. It is the beginning of a process which will inevitably be repeated with regard to our national institutions. It is beginning to gel. There are enough of us outside the traditional political paradigm to change the system simply through our new awareness.
Instead of the politics of fear, the bogeymen of the other side, it will be a liberated electorate that will become the bogeyman of politicians. The carnival of blind loyalty will become a liability. More and more people will be disgusted by the undignified and the irrational. More and more people will make decisions based on the country’s long term interests and drive politicians to give them greater heed. Quality will come from greater and broader competition in politics also.
We are in a process of painful transformation. Our aim is no longer survival but success. The Greens are going at full throttle to make a change for the better inevitable.
harry.vassallo@alternattiva.org.mt
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