Before long, Parliament will reassemble after the summer recess and an election campaign will be waged in real earnest. The electorate will be offered exciting visions about what the future has to offer.

This will distract electoral attention from the present and the immediate past, but the electorate would be well advised not to detach itself from reality.

Malta’s main and immediate problems are economic and have to do with enhancing Malta’s earning power on the one hand and on the other with relieving the economy of a tax regime that is atrocious, and a national debt burden that has long been a millstone around the neck of our economy.

It is a tough challenge, bedevilled by mounting and unrelenting political polarisation.

Polarisation has become a competitive process, in the course of which both sides of the political divide try to win the minds of as many people as possible. Each side tries to win the minds of, first, its inner core of supporters, second, the bulk of the electorate that is uncommitted to one side or the other and third, the lukewarm denizens who inhabit the peripheries of opposing political parties.

It is sad but true that much of the polarised struggle takes the form of mutual abuse. Much of the effort consists of attempts to distract people from even hearing the case of the other side of the political divide.

Many politicians have become mentally deaf and blind to any case but their own. This mutual deafness, blindness and incomprehension makes a large part of the political debate rather empty and boring.

The debaters rarely come to grips with each other’s arguments. Still, the debate continues and the low level of argument debases the undisciplined sector of the political class, distracts the electorate and undermines the democratic process.

Democracy in play

Make no mistake about it. It is democracy that is in play. The first thing to notice is the curious fact that both sides profess their democratic credentials, and both of them deny that the opposing side is democratic. Who decides?

In a democratic environment, it is the sovereign electorate that has the decisive say.

For a people to govern itself is a difficult thing. In large, complex and modern societies, people govern themselves only in an indirect way. This they do by choosing the government they want.

Such an indirect form of self-government needs the establishment of careful political and social arrangements. I believe that the establishment, preservation and development of democracy in this sense, rather than the question of economic policy, is the key to the democratic process.

The all-important core of democracy as a whole is representative government. All the other – and in themselves equally valuable – features of democracy depend on this

central feature: freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of association, the rule of law and so on are dependent, in the long run, on the existence of a viable

system of representative

government.

Such a system assumes that adult citizens should be able to choose between different political parties that contest freely-conducted elections. They should be able to dismiss, at any subsequent election a government which they had previously chosen, and they should have a measure of control over the actions of the government, even when they have chosen it.

Representative government

Representative government, in this case, has turned out to be the only way in which we can assure such extremely practical and important things in our daily lives as whether we are able to combine with our fellow citizens in order to bargain over how much we are to be paid for our work, whether we are able to say and write and publish what we like within the limits of the law.

In practice, it has turned out that there is no way of assuring these rights except by securing the other underlying right of choosing the government of the day.

Why is it so important for the electorate to be able to choose the government it wants, to dismiss it at given intervals, if it so decides, and to control its actions?

Why do these precious rights and liberties depend upon the principle of representative government? Why is it not better to leave the management of society to experts and full-time professional rulers, who may be better educated, more experienced and wiser than the ordinary voter who, because of the condition of his life,finds it difficult to spare time to be fully conversant with all aspects of public affairs?

In former years, the people were “managed” by kings and nobles, landowners and even priests. There was a fatal objection to undemocratic societies of the past – even if, at times, they worked comparatively well.

The objection was that, to a lesser or greater degree, past rulers “exploited” the peoples over whom they ruled. By this I mean that undemocratic rulers of the past – kings, nobles, landowners, etc – ruled in their own interests rather than in the interests of the people.

No satisfactory alternative

Experience has proved that there is no satisfactory alternative to self-government – because government by somebody else (other than the people) turns into government in the interests of somebody else.

Modern electorates have become sufficiently developed to understand what their interests are. They will not

tolerate indefinitely being ruled in the interests of other people.

Increasingly, the electorate will resent being manipulated by a political class or by political parties. Exhaustive experience has shown that unless electors have an effective say in the way they are governed, they will get a only a small proportion of the value of the work they create.

All the above lends weight to the argument that a viable democracy cannot thrive without the life-blood of popular consent coming from both sides of the political divide and without the government of the day being tolerant and responsive to the aspirations of the opposition on matters of national interest.

When one side demonises the other, and claims the monopoly of being always right, and when the process of polarisation accelerates its momentum, democracy begins to bleed

At that point, some politicians begin to lose their

bearings. And it is the electorate that will, sooner or later, be expected to stop the

haemorrhage.

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