If one were to abstract from the subject matter of the current hot dispute in Malta, which focuses on the illegal immigrants and what to do with them, and if one considers the red-hot emotions that have been created, one can conclude this may indeed be a gear-change in the way we consider politics.
If we consider what took place in other countries we see certain similarities.
First: in many other countries where there was some sort or other of national government, or grand coalition, extremist groups put up opposition.
Such was the case in Italy during the years of the Centro-Sinistra governments with the emergence of the Brigate Rosse. And such too was the case in Germany with the Grosse Koalition and the emergence of the Baader-Meinhof group.
In other words, in the absence of a natural opposition, the vacuum produced is filled with a different kind of opposition, which may not be parliamentary or democratic at all.
In Malta’s case, with the government and an opposition that oppose each other at every corner, one may think we have a normal and healthy democratic dialectic. But this is not the case as, personalities aside, both parties have such similar policies as to be almost indistinguishable. The only divide between them is who sits at Castille and holds the reins of power. Otherwise, the policies the country will follow in the coming years will be about the same – and it would be a bad thing if any of them were to be changed for that could mean problems for the country as a whole.
Such extra-parliamentary opposition tends to be extremist but by its very extremism it renders itself unpopular and eventually is absorbed into the legal and parliamentary structure. Thus the terrorists of yesterday, such as Joschka Fischer, become the ministers of today.
Second: Before we regain our naturally optimistic outlook, we must consider a second aspect. There is a Malta which reads the papers and participates in intelligent political discussion. And there is a Malta that does not read the papers and which follows, glazedly, what is turned out by television news programmes. This kind of Malta then forms its own opinion by what happens at street level, not what is said by the columnists and the leader-writers.
Political debate leaves them largely high and dry and they tend to reach their conclusions with their feet first, then their heads. Traditionally, voting in Malta took place along family, or tribal, lines, but, with increasing mobility and other sociological changes, people are changing their views far more than is normally appreciated. As we saw in 1996 and 1998, political support has become volatile and subject to perceptions, passion and impulse. For this reason, political life in Malta is now more than ever subject to popularists and to the simple solutions they come up with.
The real issue of the coming election will thus not be who sits at Castille in the end, but rather whether the traditional two-party structure of the country can survive the onslaught of simplistic and popularistic slogans and solutions. The worst scenario one can think of is not if no big party gets the absolute majority of votes but if enough voters either give up on voting or else vote for an extremist fringe and thus render politics as we know it impossible.
Whatever they say in public and on the media, one can already sense the two parties trimming their sails to be able to get the wind of these fringes – not by supporting the racist overtones and so on of these extremists but by shifting ever so imperceptibly so as to assume the humus at the back of these extremist ideas.
This is a very dangerous thing to do and speaks volumes about the ambitions that fuel most of our politics, regardless of what comes next.
On the other hand, however, it is equally wrong to stick to one’s direction and take no notice of what is happening at ground level. It is just not enough to express sympathy with the people’s predicament with a lower take home pay and highly increased bills to pay, instead of doing something realistically clear to ease some of the burden.
Things are coming to a head, but the coming election, and a possible change of government, may ultimately serve to lift the lid off the pot. But this could be just a temporary easing of the tension. Just months after a possible change of government, the unease, the anger and disappointment will surface again and extremism will raise its head again.
To pander to the extra-parlamentarian fringe is very short-term and misguided. To steer straight ahead and not notice them, is equally barmy and harmful. It is only by accepting the need to change and by offering reasoned and reasonable change that the wind can be taken off the sails of extremism. In other words, only by tackling the problems that are hurting the people at that level, will the increasing anger be addressed and hopefully assuaged.