What has happened in Italy could be a lesson for the people of Malta too when it is time for them to vote for a new government. At least, it should make them think hard before deciding.

In the neighbouring peninsula, last week one of the smaller parties forming part of the government coalition led by Romano Prodi was responsible for the collapse of the government, just 20 months after the election.

Italy is now debating whether to hold fresh elections or appoint a caretaker government that will try to enact reforms in the electoral system that will reduce the weight of the smaller parties in coalition governments. This is specifically aimed to avoid a repetition of what has just taken place – that a small party withdraws its support to the government and throws the country in political turmoil.

Of course, this is not the first time that it has happened in Italy. Most of the 61 governments the Italians had since World War II collapsed because of the fragility of the system. Too often, Italian governments lasted barely a few weeks because of the whims and fancies of smaller parties.

Italy’s development has been shackled for decades because of this political instability. From the

economic point of view, Italy’s growth has been greatly hampered by the fact that it happens very rarely that prime ministers hold on to their seat for more than two years. The fact that the 20 months of Prodi’s government were the seventh-longest term of a post-war Italian government says it all.

Do we want this to happen to Malta?

Having a fragile majority in Parliament, and particularly so when a coalition government is in office, does lead to a great risk of instability in any country, and Italy is perhaps the perfect example of such a situation. An example that we should keep in mind when we vote later on this year.

Malta too has had its fair share of political unsteadiness. For example, it happened in the 1950s when governments collapsed because of their parliamentary weakness. And it happened also in 1998 when the Labour Party in government – holding a one-seat majority – also collapsed because of its fragility.

Malta has had a two-party parliament since the 1966 elections. Since then, there was only one occasion when a government failed to end its legislature. We had other forms of political crises because of other problems, such as when in 1981 the Nationalist Party obtained more votes but fewer seats than the Malta Labour Party, and ended up on the opposition benches. But all legislatures came to an end, save for what happened in 1998.

Before 1966, the presence of more than two political parties in Parliament meant that governments were too fragile to last, and the country went through a period of great instability that also included four years without a government.

Since 1966, we have had small parties contesting the election, but none of them managed to break the PN-MLP deadlock. For the coming 2008 election, we have two small parties, Alternattiva Demokratika and Azzjoni Nazzjonali, who aim to make history. One of them, AD, speaks widely of a coalition government it would like to form part of, saying that its presence in government would give the people a stronger voice.

But the question that the Maltese people will have to ask is whether the presence of a small party as part of the government would mean that the country will be in the hands of a small minority that could withdraw its backing at any time to plunge the country into a political crisis, as has happened in Italy.

Do we want Malta to become like Italy?