The received wisdom has always been that Malta is somehow a two-party State, and that is one of the immutable rules of Maltese living.

Over the past years, this two-party system has kept the growth and maturity of the Maltese people in a stranglehold. Related somehow to the situation in many villages, which have ‘naturally’ spawned into a two party system, it seemed for a long time that this is how things have always been and how things will be for many, many more years to come.

But that centuries-old wisdom might be challenged. Many are feeling that the country is fast splitting up into less manageable and more unstable parts and components.

For many, it seems, the two-party state was too strong to be done away with. But what with mistakes committed by either side, and with a general feeling that the two-party system has established a stranglehold over the country’s thought processes and democratic debate for too long, what used to be all so solid is now crumbling.

This crumbling however is just over the horizon: it is not really evident in a country where the two main political parties own television and radio stations and newspapers. Nor is it evident in a country where there are only two parties represented in Parliament who go about things in a perennial Punch and Judy show. Nor of course when it comes to an election and the two main parties hold their mammoth mass meetings.

And yet, look at the evidence. Take last year’s European Parliament election, the last time the Maltese electorate was called out. The Malta Labour Party obtained the support of 118,983 voters and the PN 97,688. But in a country which for decades had assisted at the mighty clash between the two big parties, about three strands appeared and at least around 25,000 voters chose to vote for the three other strands, and in no way can be considered to have somehow voted for either of the two main parties.

Alternattiva collected 22,938 votes, 1603 voted for Norman Lowell and 756 for Emmy Bezzina and his colleague.

The three strands are separate and not convergent, but they are still there and latest evidence suggests they are flourishing, rather than allowing the debacle of last year’s polls discourage them.

Alternattiva, by far the greatest of these three strands, has had its share of problems, especially after its effort to elect Arnold Cassola fell short of the required votes, and after its subsequent efforts in last March’s local council elections to elect AD candidates fell through. But it still commands widespread support and each day that passes sees the likelihood of its supporters switching back or being scared back to the PN an even more remote possibility.

At 1603, the support for Norman Lowell is, if anything, on the short side, and while the police wisely avoided making a victim of Mr Lowell by not arraigning him for the inflammatory rhetoric he has used in public, the continuation of the asylum seeker problem, a certain racism embedded in the Maltese psyche and a general anger at the present socio-economic situation, together with the inroads that Mr Lowell, ever resourceful, has been making into the minds of young people, especially at university, are all perceived to have widened support for Mr Lowell and his at times quaint ideas. If the rumour that the government is toying with the idea of raising the representation threshold, in order to forestall a Lowell candidate from becoming an MP and rendering Maltese politics ungovernable is true, that can only go to show that the government is really afraid that this far-Right fringe might acquire disproportionate importance in national politics.

Then there is the smallest group, that which voted for Emmy Bezzina and John Zammit. At ‘just’ 756 votes, this group could be considered to be almost insignificant, given that last year another candidate, C. Farrugia, obtained 3,119 votes. But the situation could have evolved in the past 12 months and the more people talk about abortion, the more they raise antagonism and opposition on the other side. What was previously considered to be almost monolithic opposition to abortion could be in the process of being eaten into, thanks to the current and other initiatives in this regard. There are some people who seem to take an anti attitude just for the sake of it.

In brief, what used to be an almost homogeneous Malta: one country, one language, one religion, two parties, is now becoming a more complex Malta with three sub-strands (and possibly more) emerging, which cannot be easily and comfortably inscribed within the previous two-party monolithic state. As Malta evolves from an almost theocratic state into a secular one, as people start having very different ideas from those of the church they outwardly profess to follow, as marriages in Malta continue to break down, even without the existence of divorce on the statute books, we will see more, not less, of this.

Those who care to delve into what values inspire today’s young people will surely see what will happen tomorrow. It is, of course, far too soon to sound the death-knell of the two-party system, which outwardly is still so strong, but everything seems to point at a progressive decrease of the two erstwhile monoliths. Even going by last year’s figures, one sees that neither of the two parties obtained an absolute majority of voters.

Whatever is done to the electoral process, and the existing threshold is already high, no amount of tinkering can stop the evolution of a society. There are various electoral systems in the world and not all of them have the merits of our proportional representation, but a society that is evolving into a kaleidoscope of opinions will require to be represented by a kaleidoscope of parties, sooner or later.