In his letter Basic representative democracy, (TMID, 11 October) written as a response to an earlier letter of mine, Ralph Cassar said that I needed to have lessons in the way democracy works in Europe.

After reading Mr Cassar’s letter, I concluded that if I need a lesson or two in European democracy, Mr Cassar could perhaps use a whole course of lessons.

Firstly, I would like to inform Mr Cassar that at no point did I say that the CDU/CSU should form a single party government. Anyone who

follows German politics even just slightly would know that such a

scenario is impossible.

What I did say is that the CDU/CSU should be the major party in any coalition that is formed.

Sadly, this doesn’t seem to be the case since although Ms Angela Merkel will be Germany’s new chancellor, the SPD will have eight out of 14 ministries.

Mr Cassar told your readers that the CDU/CSU failed to garner 75 per cent of the vote. Perhaps we should take a look at what the other parties achieved. While the CDU/CSU got 35.2 per cent, the SPD got 34.3 per cent, Greens 8.1 per cent, FDP 9.8 per cent, Linke 8.7 per cent and 3.9 per cent, among other parties.

In the German parliament the CDU/CSU have 226 seats against 222 SPD seats. In my opinion, these results show in the clearest manner that the CDU/CSU democratically deserve to be the major party, yet thanks to the coalition system which Ralph Cassar’s beloved Alternattiva Demokrattika so much praise, it will be the SPD which will be having eight ministries!

Finally, I would like to inform Mr Cassar that what I wrote had nothing to do with seeing the PN stay in power. The PN should only stay in power if it wins the general election. As a democratic person, my wish is to see the will of the electorate being done, whether this is another PN government or an MLP administration.

What I do not want to see is Malta’s smallest political entity dictating to the parties who have the support of more then 90 per cent of the Maltese electorate. This would indeed be the case if Malta ever has a coalition government in a very tight parliament.

Angelo Micallef

Marsaxlokk