When I found the above quotation I spent some minutes thinking about what the writer wanted to say. I settled for the interpretation that both are immanent and everywhere evident but always often ignored. The PN needs to pay attention to what it will do and say in the coming months. There is now a new leadership that is eager to attract back all the votes lost in the last election. In their endeavour I, wish them every bit of luck. There is much that needs be done. The essential reason why the PN lost the election is that it lost contact with its supporters and the electorate. This, in several ways, is the main reason for the defeat and it is essential that the PN does not get lost ascribing our loss on other hyperbolic matters.
That having been said, we ought not run away with the idea that, as suggested by some, we should forget all our fundamental principles, such as the updated 10 points, and throw everything away to become everything to everyone – because we will end up being nothing for anyone. I, and many others, would like the party to retain some backbone rather than sacrifice important principles to rhetoric. We do have what is called a core vote and I doubt that rubbing this up the wrong way will help. I find that a party becomes relativistic and rather pathetic when it starts to counter self-evident principles that underlie natural law. We already have one major party which does this very well and, frankly, I do not wish to see two!
It is well that the party leadership has established a benchmark in trying to limit this government’s term of office to five years. However, like all benchmarks, this one will depend to a large extent more on circumstances than on its effort alone. Statistically, the Maltese people give their governments two terms of five years – and only one if they mess things up economically. Very rarely do they give parties three terms and only then in highly extenuating circumstances. This remains, of course, just statistics. However, it is also true that opposition parties rarely win a government and more often the case that the party in government loses one.
I am not saying anything new here, except to point out that if we throw overboard all our self-evident principles and then we lose the next election, I do not then see much leeway where we may turn to maintain our credibility and reasons for existence.
It would be foolish of me not to remember that, after all, democracy is a utilitarian concept: the greatest happiness of the greatest number – meaning, in fact, that the more votes the better. However, even in a democracy there are certain principles based on natural law that are considered to be beyond consequentiality and therefore constitutionally enshrined, requiring a more than 50 per cent vote in order to be changed as they are considered to be more akin to deontological ethical principles than utilitarian ones. Parliaments are also often bound by general human rights principles that no one even thinks of breaking: rights built on natural law.
The problem is that if both our main parties go their relativistic ways, then the door is opened to an immoral slippery slope that will ultimately creep in and allow everyone to do whatever one wishes and to do anything to anyone else as long as they do not have a vote, which becomes the new measure of acceptability: no longer a democracy based on human rights but simply on human votes and a majoritarian one to boot.
Thomas Aquinas – who wrote the first quote – also emphasised that our ultimate happiness is only secured through virtue. It is a blessing attained by man’s own will. Would this statement not beg the question?
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