The upcoming European parliamentary election could be the most fertile electoral ground yet for Malta’s Green Party, Alternattiva Demokratika, which has so far been denied a Maltese or a European parliamentary seat in its 25-year history, according to the party’s chairperson Arnold Cassola.
In a wide-ranging interview, Prof. Cassola cites three main attributes of the upcoming election in May that could very well provide for the perfect scenario that would see AD winning a long-sought seat in the European Parliament.
According to Prof. Cassola, “First and foremost is the psychology that goes along with Malta being just one single district for European elections. In general, people feel that with all of Malta and Gozo being one district, their vote is worth more. Psychologically, the fact that people from Qrendi to Gozo to Sliema all knowing that their votes will be counted together instead of in districts helps.
“The second major aspect is that for the first time Malta will be voting for six seats in the EP and not five. As such, for the first time the quota this time will be calculated on six seats, which means that the threshold will go down by about three per cent on the last count. We believe that if we can persuade more or less 20,000 people to vote for us as their number one, we can manage to get the sixth seat.
“The third aspect is the fact that AD traditionally garners its greatest number of votes in European Parliamentary elections, as was the case in 2004 and 2009. I received 23,000 first count votes in the 2004 election and given the fact that the quota will be reduced this year from 17 to around 14 per cent, if we were to see a similar result in this election, we would be elected to the EP.”
For the election, AD has fielded its top two people – Prof. Cassola himself and the party’s deputy chairman Carmel Cacopardo.
“We are both people with an amount of experience, admittedly with our faults and defects. You might not agree with us but we are certainly consistent people. We have a history and we have always stuck to our principles without swaying in order to get some post or directorship. That is because we believe that in life, and especially with politicians, one must make choices and stick to one’s principles. If you are not consistent you are not credible.
“What I believe is that the main thing people must consider is that for the last 10 years we have had Maltese in the EP representing themselves in two political groups. Irrespective of whether we have two or three or four Labour or Nationalist MEPs, these two-party MEPs will only be able to influence a total of some 450 MEPs through their respective groupings. With a Maltese Green MEP, there is the opportunity to influence another 60 Green MEPs.
A groundbreaking burden sharing move
While Prof. Cassola acknowledges that AD cannot compete with the heavy machinery deployed by the Nationalist and Labour parties, it can compete in terms of electoral programmes. Along such lines, AD has mustered all of the European Greens’ forces to possibly achieve what has so far eluded both the Nationalist and Labour governments – real burden sharing at EU level.
Prof. Cassola explains, “We have worked and persuaded our European Green colleagues on the migration issue, in that the Dublin II regulations have to be drastically revised in order to accommodate countries like Malta, so that asylum seekers can apply for asylum in other countries.
“This is a first and it is being included in the electoral programme of the European Greens.
“And now we expect the Prime Minister and the Opposition leader to compete with us, to go beyond that and to have that inserted in the respective Party of European Socialists’ and European People's Party’s electoral programmes.
“That is the only way that things can change – this is the root of the whole burden sharing argument, you can only have real burden sharing through the Dublin Convention. If you do not change that, you cannot make people smell the coffee. The Prime Minister has been giving interviews and making threats for 10 months and what has it got us? Zilch, that coffee has now become decaffeinated.”
The election of a third party in Malta, even in the MEP elections, Prof. Cassola argues, would begin to break the mindset of the two main parties which, he says, have existed with an ‘us and them’ mentality for the last 52 years.
“All of a sudden things would begin to change,” he says. “They would have to start really reforming the Constitution, the electoral system, the financing of political parties. But really until there is a third element to rock the boat, this will not happen.
“Then of course there are our proposals – on the environment, on traffic management, on alternative energy, on education, etc. We already have influence out of Parliament – we got divorce after 20 years of campaigning for it. We were not able to do it ourselves but we put the issue on the agenda. We also got the environment on the agenda.
“When we proposed these things 25 years ago, we were called cranks and today these are mainstream issues. And we have achieved this without being in Parliament; just imagine what we could do with at least a seat in the European Parliament.
“And certainly we would also push for residents’ rights. Unfortunately, today the people with clout, those that have money, are the ones that move the parties, but we want to give a voice to people without that kind of money - the average people.
“With the citizenship scheme, we keep hearing about these high calibre, high value individuals – those with €650,000 to spend on citizenship. But what about the average Maltese that earns €15,777 a year, gross? We want these people to have a say as well.
“If you’re a high value individual because you have a million euro, then what are you telling the average Maltese with an annual wage of €15,777, that they are low value?
“It cannot be the case that the business community gets everything and residents cannot have open spaces or a garden – simply to ensure that there are more shops and malls, which at the end of the day will end up destroying each other.
“I think we have been consistent in doing this for the last 25 years, and we have paid the price for that. We could have easily teamed up with people with interests who would sponsor us and so on. Of course, we accept donations but we are not ready to give up our principles just for that. The weaker people in society must be defended.”
Rating the PL in government and the PN in opposition
Now that the tables have turned for the two major political parties, with the Nationalist Party now in opposition and the Labour Party in government, how does Prof. Cassola rate their performance so far?
“The system and the mindset remains the same,” Prof. Cassola comments. “This is the 52nd year since the people of Malta have voted for a third party in Malta. It has been over half a century and these two parties have the mentality that plurality cannot exist.
“Unfortunately, the Nationalists used to appoint their own to key positions, but maybe they did it more tactfully, and they had a longer period over which to spread it out.
“Labour is just greedy and in 10 months they have managed to catch up with appointing people from within their own ranks, or people who switched over to Labour, and the simple reason is because it is taken for granted that once in power, it is a case of the winner takes all.
“In this respect, nothing much has changed, apart from the method, which might have been rougher this time around.”
As for the Opposition, Prof. Cassola notes how over the first few months of the legislature it was practically non-existent, and that it is still to find its feet.
“I think Opposition leader Simon Busuttil has got better now, but he has to stop being double-faced. You can’t, for example, one day say that you cannot send people back to Libya by plane [this summer’s threat of forcibly returning migrants to Libya] and the next week agree that it’s okay to send them back to Libya by boat [as happened in the MV Salamis incident].
“He also must not have conflicts of interest in his party. You cannot have your party saying that it is against the Mistra project and have the president of your party, being the lawyer, trying to defend the Mistra Village as it is. You cannot come out against the citizenship and then have Francis Zammit Dimech himself representing one of the companies that bid for the programme.”
As regards the government, Prof. Cassola cites Education Minister Evarist Bartolo’s drive for co-education in state schools as a positive, as well as some of the work being carried out by Parliamentary Secretary for Justice Owen Bonnici.
He, however, has less encouraging words for Prime Minister Muscat: “He has said that in 2014 he wants the world’s eyes to be on us but the fact is that the world’s eyes are already on us. He has fallen short on certain issues – such as the pushback issue. That happened the week after he had visited Pope Francis, who had denounced the ‘globalisation of indifference’ to the plight of irregular migrants. And his answer, a week later was the way in which he dealt with the Salamis incident.
“There has also been the citizenship proposal, and we still have this mystery of what happened off Lampedusa when 270 people died. This is very serious. When I hear Dr Muscat saying that on the day the AFM commander called him and said he was seeing people drowning one by one and asking if we should pick them up. Is this a joke? With people drowning, does the AFM have to call the Prime Minister to ask if we should save them?
“These issues have really put the spotlight on Malta already.”
The hunting referendum
On the highly controversial issue of spring hunting, one of AD’s primary issues, Prof. Cassola notes how “the hunters have held the two parties to ransom and the two parties have obliged”.
“We are and have always been the only party not willing to sell our souls to get votes. In politics you must work for your principles.
“We proposed the spring hunting petition to the NGOs and I’m very happy to see that the coalition of NGOs together with AD has reached that target and that we will go to a referendum.
“That is a big thing for the Maltese, a paradigm shift. For the first time in history, 40,000 Maltese people have taken it in their hands to overcome a hurdle, which everybody thought we could never do. This shows that Malta is changing. The Maltese people now know that they have the power to change things through their signature and it is quite possible that the same could be done in the future on other important issues.
“This is civic action showing people that yes, we can change things. I know it’s tough in Malta, there are a lot of walls that you have to bang your head against but there are ways and means. The important thing is to put your signature down when it is needed and to change your vote when it is needed.”
A single issue party?
While Green parties are usually associated with the environment, Prof. Cassola argues that AD offers a whole lot more than ‘tree hugging’, as its opponents try to pigeonhole the party.
But, at the end of the day, the environment is a major factor in a population’s quest of a better quality of life.
“It is about traffic, energy, power stations, how we build, the food we eat, the GMOs that we should not grow, a healthy lifestyle. We are for civil rights, for basic human rights, and real democracy. Of course everyone says they are for these issues, but we really put those words into action and sometimes we suffer the consequences for that. For example, we know we will not get a single vote from hunting families, but we know that biodiversity is so important.
“The building lobby has become disgusting and it manoeuvres the big parties. Look at the building permits that are issued, the height relaxation for hotels, the new ODZ policy and the fact that you can build 10 rooms - a small hotel - in the countryside if you have more than 60 tumoli of land with the excuse of what is called agro-tourism.
“All this is simply to accommodate the people who have financed the political parties. In fact now, ironically, the PN, which has traditionally been financed by businesspeople, is now actually accusing Dr Muscat of having introduced the citizenship scheme because they have to appease Henley & Partners – giving the impression that Henley & Partners might have helped the PL in it election campaign.”
Is the government listening on the environment?
The recent environmental protest was billed as one of the biggest such events, but there has been very little reaction to it as far as anyone can tell. Does Prof. Cassola believe that the government has heeded the messages?
“No, no government has never listened to these issues because the strength of the people proposing these megaprojects is so great that they really have the government in their grip, whatever government that may be.
“Let’s face it, the rape of Sliema started under Lorry Sant but the Nationalists continued it. And now it is going to get even worse. These are powerful lobbies and governments do not really want to change things. They just pay lip services, nothing happens and everything dies down.
“Another example is how the government has taken the people for a ride on Constitutional reform. The government appointed Franco Debono, who is certainly a man of action and he has ideas, but he has a bloated ego, is self-centred and that is his downfall unfortunately.
“Ten months ago the Prime Minister appointed Dr Debono to lead the Constitutional Convention and nothing has happened and nothing will happen, because the Nationalists will not participate in a convention chaired by the man who humiliated them.
“The Prime Minister purposely appointed Franco Debono because he knows that the Nationalists will not participate in the convention, purely because he does not really want these changes. He wants to delay them as much as possible until it’s comfortable for him to give out a morsel as if it were a concession. This is all a case of playing to the gallery.
“The press comes out with the headlines and in the meantime people are appeased. The same goes for the regulation of party financing. When they do this, rest assured they will do things that suit the two major parties while sidelining AD to further cement this 52-year-old two-party system.
Electoral reform
As the head of a party cast to the sidelines because of the country’s electoral laws, what does Prof. Cassola expect, both optimistically and realistically, from the promised electoral reform?
“On the optimistic side,” he comments, “we would expect proportionate representation, meaning that each party is represented proportionately according to the votes of the people – it is as simple as that.
“We are saying, even against our own interests, that to have it strictly proportional there must be a minimum two-seat threshold nationally. As matters stand, the proportionality is only valid for the two main parties – a person getting 600 votes gets elected to Parliament because of the extra parliamentary seats allocated, and when an AD candidate gets 5,500 first count votes we are denied – the system is tailor-made for the two.
“What we would like and what is normal in democratic countries is to have proportionate representation according to the votes of the people, with a two-seat threshold.
“Realistically, it will not happen as matters stand, but it will happen the day that we manage to break through the system. And even these EP elections become more important – if we break through and manage to get elected, the two main parties will have to acknowledge that 20,000 people are voting for us, they we taken a seat in the EP and that it may be better to start preparing to adjust the system in a fairer way rather than have it collapse in 10 years’ time.
The civil union bill and adoption
AD was the first party not only in its advocacy for divorce, but also for gay rights and the party backs the government’s proposed civil union legislation.
Prof. Cassola explains, “We are for this law as well as for the right to apply to adopt as everyone else in Malta. I think it’s very ironic of the PN to be proposing a social impact assessment just on gay couples. Again, this is one of Simon Busuttil’s contradictions.
“Recently PN MP Claudette Buttigieg, a progressive much more than certain Labour MPs who label themselves as ‘progressive’ but are really of the worst conservative type, proposed a change in the Maltese Constitution to eliminate discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.
“They debated it and Parliament agreed. So how can the PN propose to eliminate that discrimination and are now proposing an assessment only on those who have a certain sexual orientation?
“We believe that adoption has to be handled on a case-by-case basis, that every individual and couple has a right to apply to adopt and then everyone, on a case-by-case basis needs to be examined by the experts – everyone, not just a section of society – to ensure that the child’s welfare is going to benefit from that adoption.”
Citizenship, value and calibre
Although Prof, Cassola acknowledges that the second phase of the highly contentious Individual Investor Programme has been slightly improved, it is still far from good enough.
“This second phase is obviously better than the first in the sense that the secrecy clause has been eliminated and there is now a pro forma attachment to the country by having to purchase Maltese financial instruments or rent or purchase a house.
“As such it is slightly better but there are still two major problems. The first is that the concept of selling is still there and that within six months you can become a citizen. If you’re married to a Maltese after five years you can apply for citizenship, there are people who have been waiting for 10 years after having applied and they still do not have their citizenship. There are people who have been living and working in Malta for 20 years and they still do not have their citizenship.”
“This,” he says, “is already discriminatory - if you have money, you get your citizenship in six months and if you do not have money you wait five years after marrying and there is still no guarantee of when you will receive your citizenship or when.
“The second issue, which is even worse in my opinion, are these remarks about high value, high calibre individuals, and people of talent. The message being conveyed is that because you have the money you have the talent, the calibre and you’re of value. If you’re an average €15,000 Maltese earner, you are not considered to have talent, value or calibre. This is degrading, people are to be judged not on what they possess, but, rather, on what they are, what they do, how they behave themselves, and not on what they have.”