Professors of democracy

Every now and again a little something happens that reminds you how utterly abnormal your country really is.

Small example: last Thursday, the man who was once Malta's foreign minister (almost wrote 'foreign monster' by mistake - though some people probably wouldn't even have noticed) accused the present government of 'illegitimacy' because it lost an already artificial and non-representative majority in Parliament.

Listening to the spontaneous chorus of rehearsed objections that followed, one thing immediately leapt to the ear. None of the voices howling in the background so much as alluded to the actual argument raised by Alex Sceberras Trigona in his article last Thursday. Instead, they all limited themselves to pointing out the undeniable irony that, of all the people in the world to harp on the 'illegitimacy' of governments, it had to be someone who was himself part of an illegitimate government for over six years.

Which I suppose is true enough. You probably all know the story: either because you lived through it in person, or because you had it fed to you with your Maltova over the following decade. Either way, it happened (roughly) like this: in 1981, the Malta Labour Party secured just over 49% of the national vote, to the Nationalist Party's 50.9% majority. But it nonetheless came away from the same election with a majority of seats in parliament (thanks largely to a little creative gerrymandering on Dom Mintoff's part), and went on to rule from that same minority position for the longest possible time permitted by the Constitution - all the way until May 1987, in fact... well over the stipulated five-year term.

And while the Opposition's howls of protest echoed across the known universe and beyond, and Eddie Fenech Adami pulled literally no stops in his crusade against this intolerable state of affairs - a boycott on parliament, on Xandir Malta, as well as an unofficial electoral campaign lasting six years- the Nationalist Party never ever challenged the legality of Labour's hold on government in the Constitutional Court.

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Why not, I hear you ask? Well, the PN is a party composed primarily of lawyers, who evidently understood that the case simply didn't have a leg to stand on. There is a world of difference between something that is morally reprehensible, and something that is plain old illegal. You can mount a legal battle against the latter, but not against the former. (If you don't believe me, there's nothing stopping you from trying it out for yourselves).

This last point is entirely relevant to the argument AST now makes regarding the PN's hold on power. It is also highly relevant to so much of current political discourse, in a country which seems to interpret the same reality completely differently, depending on which political perspective you happen to be looking at it from. 

There is a difference between what most people would find acceptable, and what the law would deem permissible. In practice this means that something can be both morally wrong, and yet perfectly legal... and when that happens, there is no real legal way to challenge the status quo.

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I'll return to this point in a second. For the time being let's have another look at the objections to AST's article, shall we?

In what is fast becoming a formulaic response to any criticism of Gonzi's government, the same old coterie came crawling out of the woodwork with the same old arguments... using the same old words, too. "We will not take lessons in democracy from... blah blah blah..."

Those of you cursed with good memories will surely recognize that line of reasoning. It was used against Franco Debono on Bondiplus. (Remember? 'Who are you to lecture us on democracy', etc.?)

Personally I find the implications rather disturbing. It seems that the Nationalists have now developed such a vertiginous opinion of themselves that they have come round to viewing themselves as having nothing whatsoever to learn on the subject of democracy. Nobody can teach them anything, because they know it all already.

Sound familiar? Well, it should: because it is IDENTICAL to Dom Mintoff's own response to criticism of his own government back in the same old 1980s. Remember? When he defined himself as a 'professur tad-demokrazija' ("professor of democracy")... thus revealing that, just like today's Nationalists, he felt he had nothing to learn about democracy from anyone else.

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Before leaving you to chew over that hugely comforting thought, consider the same situation from a slightly different angle. The real trouble is that, even if we accept all the arguments based on personal experiences about how awful 'bad old Labour' really was (and I for one have no problems accepting those arguments, because old Labour really was every bit as awful as it is so often described)... it still remains a complete non-sequitur.

At the end of the day, we can all comfortably agree that Alex Sceberras Trigona's is probably the worst-placed person in the entire universe to comment on the present government's democratic credentials (or lack thereof). But it does not follow that his comments are therefore incorrect.

On the contrary: it is perfectly possible for the most inappropriate person in the world to also be 100% accurate in his assessment of any given situation.

History is studded with excellent examples... but for brevity's sake I'll limit myself to arguably the most iconic - the criticism reserved by Jesus Christ for the Pharisees around 2,000 years ago,

This is how Matthew (King James version) recalls Christ's words: "All therefore whatsoever they bid you observe, that observe and do... But do not ye after their works: for they say, and do not."

Got that, everyone? According to Jesus - the son of God, for those amongst who believe in that sort of thing - it is perfectly acceptable to follow what the Pharisees preached... because that did not come from the Pharisees themselves, but from Moses. Just don't emulate the Pharisees in their behaviour, that's all. For the Pharisees did not practise what they preached. They said one thing, and did another.

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Well, the same applies perfectly to AST. Back in 1981, he did not practice what he now seems to be preaching. He was part of a government that ruled without a parliamentary majority for six whole years... taking some pretty damn controversial decisions in the process, with (literally) fatal results.

His own argument is therefore clearly applicable to the government he once formed part of... but again, that does not make it any less applicable to the government of the present.

The bottom line is that Lawrence Gonzi's government has indeed lost legitimacy in the last few months. The argument works like this - and to be perfectly frank I'm surprised some people seem to find it hard to understand such simple and incontestable facts:

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In March 2008, the newly rechristened 'GonziPN' party won a relative majority of 49.33% to Labour;s 48.9% - the difference between the two parties amounting to just 1,580 votes. (To put that into perspective, AD won 3,850 votes in the same election, but failed to win a single seat in parliament.)

This was when the notorious Constitutional mechanism kicked in: generously dishing out an additional three seats to the PN, whose vote-count - for much the same reason as 1981 - was not reflected in a proportional number of seats.

As a result, GonziPN could form a government thanks to a majority of one seat (having had its seat-count artificially jacked up by three new MPs, not one of whom actually made a quota in any district).

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OK, now let's imagine this was an O-level Maths question: If 1,580 votes translates directly into three parliamentary seats for GonziPN, how many seats should AD have got with over twice the number of votes (3,850)?

Tick, tock, tick tock. Yes, that;s right - the answer is ZERO.And the PN complains about injustice? Sheesh!

Wait, it gets better. Of the PN's total first-count tally of 143,468,  over 5,000 were won by a single candidate, Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando, in two districts.

Question number two: how many voters in the March 2008 election does Gonzi's government actually represent...  considering that the same Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando has officially resigned from the PN, and his votes can no longer be counted as part of its overall tally?

By my count the answer is around 139,000: slightly less than Labour got in the same election. So why does GonziPN have more seats, seeing as (not unlike the bad old Labour government of 1981), it actually represents an overall MINORITY in the country?

Oh, yes, absolutely: you can always argue that those 5,000 voters voted for Pullicino Orlando because he contested with the PN... and wouldn't have done so had he contested as an independent. But from a strictly legal point of view, our system in based on votes for candidates, and not parties at all (in fact political parties are not even mentioned once anywhere in electoral law... except in that same abovementioned Constitutional amendment).

Considering also that the four extra seats had been dished out on the basis of the 143,468 votes - and not the 139,000 votes the government now represents - well, shouldn't they theoretically be revoked?

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Naturally I am not naïve enough to think that this will happen in practice: after all there is (as I said earlier) a distinction between what should happen from a moral point of view, and what does happen as a result of existing legal parameters.

So let me spell it out for you (whether you 'accept lessons in democracy' or not). The above argument has a moral value, but not a legal one... and this means that even if Gonzi is no longer a legitimate Prime Minister, his government still cannot be judged as 'illegal'.

But it remains illegitimate: the bastard offspring of a bastardised system that denies legitimate representation where it has been legitimately earned, while awarding illegitimate representation where it manifestly has failed to materialise on its own merits. And surely that can't be right...