In all democratic countries, the development of liberal institutions has been accompanied by the growth of political parties. Their role is to act as intermediaries between the electorate and the government.
Political parties have diverse and important functions. They promote popular interest and participation in the political life of the country. They present candidates for successive electoral contests and campaign on their behalf. They reflect the active interest of different groups gathered under one umbrella. They formulate policies, discuss issues and mobilise support for the government of the day and the opposition to it.
Democracy relies increasingly on the mobilization of the electorate, and each party has to build up a machine, staffed by professionals, to cope with organisation, economics and development, social issues, research, publicity, party finance, and international political links among other activities.
This calls for managerial ability if a political party is to have a political machine capable of inspiring mass support, and able to assume responsibility for government or effective opposition.
Party officials
Party officials are supposed to be the servants of the party: the people who ensure that the motor works at full pitch under the direction of the leadership.
In a truly democratic political party, the party officials work in close consultation with the supreme leaders elected by the party grass roots.
In the case of Malta, the Malta Labour Party elects a national executive committee and the Nationalist Party elects an executive and an administrative committee. In each case, it is necessary for policy to be discussed within the movement, and properly constituted conferences transmit messages expressing the will of the mass movement to the leadership.
In the Labour Party, the situation is even more clear-cut: the final authority is the delegates’ conference or, as the late Clement Attlee would have put it, by “the parliament of the movement”.
Situations may arise where party functionaries throw their weight and are even tempted to call the shots, not merely by taking decisions as to whose career is to be advanced, or how party funds are to be used.
They might be tempted to surround themselves by a closed group of trusted strategists and pull the strings from an inner party sanctum.
The grass roots
This is disconcerting to genuine democrats, because it involves usurping the authority of the grass roots and making democracy stand on its head. Such a situation is akin to the tail wagging the dog.
This makes a parody of democracy. Under a truly democratic system, the people should be free to have their say and choose, in a free and fair manner, who should captain the ship of state for a determined period. The will of the sovereign electorate is supreme and must be respected at all levels.
Effective government needs a coherent and homogenous programme. The interests of democracy are best served when such a programme is drawn up by a nucleus of citizens moulded into an organisation that submits to the choice of the electorate.
Safeguards
Democracy does not stop there. Politics must be imbued with sound ethical and moral principles.
Ministers must refrain from interfering with the day-to-day administration, manipulating promotions and pulling strings to further party political ends. Politicians in office must be accountable. Above all, ministers in office must be seen to be capable of drawing a line between their party’s interests and their sworn role to serve the national interest.
Without these safeguards, democracy could be easily undermined and, indeed, disarmed. Once the disarmament process starts, disillusionment creeps in and public trust erodes. The political parties would find it increasingly difficult to find quality candidates. And the demagogues make their mark.
Oriana Fallaci had this to say about the corrupt party system that prevailed in Italy at one time.
(I quote from her book entitled A Man, page 401): “...a party is a party, an organisation, a clique, a mafia, at best a sect which does not allow its adepts to express their own personality, their own creativity. On the contrary, it destroys them or, at least, it twists them. A party does not need individuals with personality, creativity, imagination, dignity. It needs bureaucrats, functionaries, servants. A party works like a business, an industry, where the general manager (the leader) and the board of directors (the central committee) hold unattainable and indivisible power. To hang onto it, they hire only obedient managers, servile employees, yes-men – in other words, men who are not men, but robots who always agree.
“In a business, an industry, the general manager and the board of directors have no use for intelligent persons endowed with initiative, for men and women who say no. The reason for this goes even beyond their arrogance: the men and women who say no represent a disturbing element, sabotage. They put sand in the machine. They become wrenches thrown into the works... ”
“... And too bad for the deluded person who believes he can make a personal contribution through discussion and exchange of ideas: he ends up expelled or demoted or liquidated, as is right for one who is unable to understand that, in a party business, he is allowed to discuss only orders already given, choices already made...”
Oriana Fallaci is no liberal democrat. But she captured the feeling that corrodes democracy when a democratic political party is derailed by power-hungry opportunists to be plundered.
[email protected]