I was thinking as I drove along listening to a radio discussion about the subject that you can’t be a little bit democratic. You are either democratic in your thinking and attitude, or you are not. A country is either democratic or it is not. Partial democracy is not possible, and the way Malta is flinging itself without question and with scant opposition into the erosion of the democratic norms we thought we took for granted indicates that all along, we had not properly embraced democracy.
Democracy isn’t about voting for your representative in parliament once every five years. Democracy isn’t even about parliament. It’s a whole attitude and outlook, a way of thinking developed over centuries, an essential and fundamental recognition of the supremacy of the citizen and the rights and obligations of all citizens. Rights and obligations, I repeat, and not just rights; one of those obligations is to take a keen interest in what is going on around you and to exercise your duty (not right) to object if you think it is wrong or harmful.
The Maltese attitude of keeping your head down in case you wind up in trouble, and because ‘you never know who or what you might need’ is essentially undemocratic. Or should I say, anti-democratic. True, this attitude was honed over many centuries of bad experiences that taught silence and non-participation. But all fully-fledged democracies had those bad experiences and much worse, and what the pain and suffering taught them was not to keep their head down and then exact revenge with a vote, but to be vocal and speak up in the present. That is the seed of democracy. I think the real essence of democracy, the true test of whether a country is really democratic, is not parliament, not elections, but freedom of speech and the tone, quality and nature of public discussion.
When people are scared or worried about mocking those in power or criticising them sharply for fear of comeback, you know that democracy is weak. It is weak not because the government is frightening, but because the citizens do not value their democracy enough to fight for it and to uphold it through public debate. When journalists lose their will to ferret out scurrilous stories, and seek information about politicians on behalf of their readers, you know that democracy has a problem.
The interesting thing is that Malta has been here before but only those old enough to remember (and who didn’t vote for that state of affairs in the first place) are making that link. The transition from an atmosphere of freedom to oppression, suppression and fear did not happen overnight between 1970 and 1971. It was progressive – and I use that word advisedly – starting with the thin end of the wedge and pushing steadily until the whole wedge was jammed in. By the time the Labour Party was finally kicked out of office in 1987, democracy had been reduced to nothing but the vote in a general election, and there were attempts even on that, with the prime minister holding out for a full five and a half years instead of the more usual five and thugs stationed at polling-booths to terrorise people they thought might be voting for the opposition.
There are some signs at last that the independent press is beginning to fight back with some proper journalism after 16 months of dizziness under the Taghna Lkoll spell. But people are still unwilling to speak out publicly when they see something they don’t like – I have noticed that many are even scared to speak around the dinner table, lest somebody there be a secret Taghna Lkoll who will move on to report their insubordination to the Taghna Lkoll project.
The highhanded and dictatorial manner in which the government has decided to postpone local council elections for two years is shocking to those who understand what a proper democracy is, or to those Maltese sitting outside Malta and taking it all in with bemusement via the internet. How can this be possible? But of course it is: the prime minister actually believes he has a democratic mandate to be undemocratic. I wrote in the last general election campaign that what we were seeing was the exploitation of the tools of democracy for undemocratic ends. I have had no reason to change that view since.