The holiday season has given me some time to reflect over the last three years. Three years ago I was not politically involved – in fact since 1998 I had completely given up any political involvement, which was anyway limited to giving the Blues a helping hand in the weeks prior to a general election. I had long stopped believing that Eddie Fenech Adami was the messiah (crazy that we still use the same word in Maltese, mexxej) and that Alfred Sant was the anti-Christ. Like so many Maltese, I had lost interest in local politics. The never-ending bickering, the perpetual tit-for-tat on the media, and the blame-game debates on Friday evenings on PBS had caused me to shut off.

However, three years ago that changed. After a beaming Fenech Adami returned from the Copenhagen summit with a final package negotiated with the European Union, I could no longer sit on the proverbial wall. The people had been called to take a decision. It was one I would carefully consider and take responsibly – a decision truly “for our children”, as the slogan went. I must confess that three years ago I was still a Eurosceptic. My education in matters financial and economic had led me to believe that on the economic weighing-scale the cons would outweigh the pros. However, it was necessary to dig deeper. There were more arguments apart from those that had to do with economics. Membership of the European Union was not only about structural and cohesion funds. The people who convinced me to dig deeper were Harry Vassallo and Simon Busuttil (before he became a PN candidate, of course). When both these men spoke on the media about Europe they had a vision in which money was an important factor, but not the deciding one. Theirs was about a vision of more democracy, more openness, more participative politics. It was all about Malta’s coming-of-age. I shared that vision, I still do.

Weekends of reading about the EU convinced me that my vote in the referendum had to be YES. It was. In the weeks before the referendum I worked to convince other sceptics to do likewise. Malta was in the EU in the following month after the PN was voted in, on the back of EU membership. However their victory was also won thanks to the shameless betrayal of their junior referendum partner, the Greens. It was on that fateful evening at Luxol (I was present) that I almost certainly became a Green. I walked away in disgust. However, knowing that my country’s political future was safely within the European Union, I did not feel the need to become involved. I attempted to distance myself from the political scene as much as possible. One thing that did not cease however, was my criticism of the two-party system that was still choking the country, irrespective of EU membership. Nagging is so convenient, so devoit of responsibility, so relieving. One evening though, I happened to watch Harry Vassallo being interviewed on local TV and one sentence he uttered really struck me, “You have no right to grumble if you are not prepared to do something about it!”

A week later I had already volunteered my services to the Greens for the campaign of the European Parliament elections. I was intent on helping Arnold Cassola get elected. It was the first chance to have three political parties represented and I was committed to doing all that was possible to make this happen. What strengthened my resolve was the manner in which the PN kicked off their campaign. I am sure many of you will remember that Sunday when Deputy Prime Minister Tonio Borg and Simon Busuttil (in his first ever, and probably, worst ever political speech) forgot all about their pre-referendum declarations about national unity and “a new way” of doing politics, and proceeded unashamedly to pass vile and wild insinuations linking Arnold Cassola to abortion. That day I witnessed what obsessive ultra-loyalist politics could do even to someone like Simon Busuttil; somebody I truly did respect. They had moulded him into a weekend party fanatic! He lost my respect and my number 2 preference; not that he needed it, of course. On that day I felt I had lost my political innocence. If someone with the rectitude and mettle of Simon Busuttil had succumbed to such a decadent test of loyalty, then surely everybody else is vulnerable. The expression my mother had repeated ad nauseam since my teens, “Politics is dirty”, had never seemed so true.

More than a year and a half has passed. In that time, I have assisted the Greens by contributing actively and comprehensively to the debate on the social pact and pension reform. We presented a paper on deficit control in May 2004 that bears a striking resemblance to government’s subsequent convergence plan, drawn up a month later. We initiated a referendum campaign to enforce change to Malta’s pathetic rent laws, one that is bearing fruit and hopefully will get government off its rear-end in the New Year. Ignoring the inevitable political fallout, we gave our suggestions to the energy crisis in November – within 72 hours. However, our suggestions fell on the deaf ears of a government controlled by a party that is geared never to concede a quarter inch to anyone else. For two weeks we were snubbed and ridiculed by politicians and government-friendly TV presenters for “daring” to suggest that, as part of the strategy to cushion the effect of the energy price rise (among several other measures), the government should consider postponing the opening of the new million-and-a-half-liri-a-week hospital.

A week later we gave our suggestions for Budget 2006. Our contributions were not only ignored but in some cases we were even accused, by a host of frontline and backstage PN acolytes, of political opportunism. Accusations levied by a party-government machine that, just 18 months ago, was begging for stakeholder consultation. A government led by a Prime Minister who one year earlier had invited us to participate in the MCESD, conveniently withdrew the invitation once the EP election was over. That, from the Blues. Never mind Labour. That party, more drunk on pragmatism and damage-limitation politics than the Blues, does not even have, after two decades in opposition, the ability to defeat the party in government (for almost two decades) single-handedly. They sometimes let us take the front-line, hoping to vulture-in a moment later, eager to feast on any carnage. Their near-complete silence on the rent reform debate is perhaps the best example.

Despite all the efforts of our adversaries to preserve the status quo, I will not stop hoping for the long-overdue change. Some call me naïve. After waking up to the reality that they will not change, the only hope left is that the EU will act to strengthen our democracy. Remember all the talk before the EU referendum that one perfectly good reason to vote “YES” was to empower the EU to act as a watchdog of our government? Remember that? Well, we may also have to forget that as well! Because now we have the EU part financing the PN as it has awarded a media contract to a company owned by the party in government. Really, what next?

Not since the mid-eighties have I felt so strongly that our democracy is slipping away. Freedom of speech and political party media domination (disguised as pluralism) is not democracy. Malta has yet to experience true democracy. I am still hoping, still waiting. Too naïve? Perhaps. Maybe I have not yet lost my political virginity. Perhaps I do not want to!

Edward P. Fenech is spokesperson on Finance, the Economy and Tourism of Alternattiva Demokratika – The Green Party