GUEST POST: Your country needs you now

This is a guest post.

So now we know. June 3 it is – in 2017, not 2018, which is when the people’s mandate is due to run out, but fully one year early.  

Even in his last act as Prime Minister, Joseph Muscat exhibits an utter contempt for democracy.  In terms of form, he announces the dissolution of a national parliament at a party political meeting.  Worse, in terms of substance, he mistakes an election for true democracy.  

Having meticulously emasculated those institutions established by the Constitution to safeguard our democracy throughout the life of a parliament, he peremptorily cuts short its life and has the nerve to run for the office of Prime Minister himself, while he is under judicial investigation, rather than moving aside and offering the country a proper choice between the Opposition and a Labour Party led by someone who is not under a cloud. The nerve is breathtaking, of l’etat c’est mois proportions, particularly for the elected leader of a member state of the European Union and one currently holding its presidency.  

The next four weeks will be hectic and loud.  In the midst of the noise, though, among the melee and detail of allegation and counter-allegation, it is worth thinking and stepping back.  It is worth looking at the big picture of what has happened to Malta over the last four years, worth putting those four years in the context of what came before, and worth asking what the consequences might be of  ticking the wrong boxes on June 3.

Fear has always been the Labour Party’s weapon of choice, terrorising people by threatening their livelihoods or their physical safety.  Physical violence became a fact of life in the late 1970s and 1980s, including obscene cases of murder.  That fear ended when the electorate, which still had a moral compass, voted Labour out, taking the view that we deserved a lot better. 

Perhaps unsurprisingly in a thriving European democracy, 26 years – less 22 months – of Nationalist government came to an end in 2013.   The people who in their great majority voted for Muscat’s party thought, what could possibly go wrong? The answer, we now know, is “Lots” – and we need to bear this in mind as we approach June 3.  

It is so easy to sleepwalk into a delusion that because physical violence is no longer the norm, then so long as we have euros to spend, all is well, that this is a true democracy simply because we are permitted to vote once every five (or four) years, and that four years are not long enough to ditch Labour in favour of the other lot.

That analysis fundamentally fails to grasp what has happened to Malta over the last four years, fails to recognise the dark, dark place which we have entered.  Violence in the 1980s was physical.   The violence of the last four years, on the other hand, has been inflicted on the moral sense of the body politic – and it is a far worse type of violence, a more insidious and a more enduring one.  

Joseph Muscat has led this violence on the moral sense of the country by example, by showing utter contempt for the rule of law, for the fundamentals of democracy and for the national finances.  Legal processes have been abused by emasculating the office of Commissioner of Police, by perverting the laws of libel and slander and above all by failing to act when PEPs close to him were placed under investigation by international agencies with no domestic axe to grind.

Institutions have been wilfully subverted, up to and including the electoral process itself, which has been abused by a premature election called for purely personal, rather than national or even party advantage.  Finally, with tax reductions in the offing, the fiscal stability of the country is being thrown like a dice in a two-bit game of self-serving roulette.  

The reason this violence is worse than that of the 1980s is quite simply this: if it’s all right for those at the top to treat probity and honesty as quaint and old-fashioned, why should I think differently?  Why should I pay my taxes?  Why should I give receipts for payments made to me in cash?  If those at the top can cheat and graft, why can’t I?  

In the 1980s, we all knew that physical violence was wrong, but we were terrorised into silence until the polling booth gave us a voice.  But now?  Do we now know the difference between right and wrong?  Do we even realise that things are not normal, not Western and definitely not democratic?  

Has corruption become so endemic that it has become the norm? Has this electorate been drugged into believing that because meetings of political parties do not attract tear gas then all must be fine and dandy?  

Has this electorate been conditioned into thinking that crumbs at our end of the table justify blatant dishonesty and the grossest greed at the other end? And will the electorate therefore re-elect the current gang because they do not even see that there is anything amiss? 

These are uncomfortable questions for the Maltese electorate – and this is why this election is not a normal one between outdated tribes, and why the consequences of a wrong result on June 3 would be so catastrophic.  

So what is the challenge now for all those who have the right to vote?  The democratic right to vote is one that brings with it an awesome responsibility. It is also one which can, in different countries and at different times, go disastrously wrong.  It is now critical in this coming election to get it right – not on tribal grounds, which are dated and primitive, but on grounds going to what type of country and moral environment we want to live in.  

Muscat’s violence on the soul of the nation is in not in any sense better than the physical violence of the Mintoff years. It is much, much worse.

The moral rot needs to be stopped now, at this election, with the greatest effort invested by all those who oppose it. Let go the shackles of tribalism and vote not for yourself but for your country. Once more, Malta is at a fork in the road, and the wrong turning taken now will be the end of all that we hold dear.