A sect of PN supporters – not party officials, to be clear – has made an argument that the people to blame for the party’s defeat are those almost 11,000 people who elected to vote for smaller parties.

They are in part responsible, so the argument goes, for the PL returning to government because they were voting for a change which can never happen and that not voting for the PN is akin to not loving Malta or its people.

This argument is not just wrong on so many different levels, but it is entirely undemocratic in nature and emblematic of the sense of entitlement that still runs rife within the some of the supporter base of the PN.

First thing’s first, an intrinsic cornerstone of democracy is that people have every right to vote for whoever they please.  No candidate or political party – however big they may be – has a divine right for anybody’s vote. People are free to vote for who they please, as they please, why they please, and when they please.

The same principle dictates that every political party or candidate has every right to try their best to attract votes from anyone across the country. The PL and the PN already have an enormous advantage in resources, in media space, even in debating platforms, where small parties are shorn of any real opportunities.

So this blame game would be energy that is better spent by trying to understand why 11,000 people still do not feel comfortable voting for the PN as the main alternative to the government.  Perhaps the sense of entitlement displayed by supporters like this is a part of the reason.

There is a lack of logic in the argument as well.  How can one feasibly assume that all 11,000 or so people who voted for a non-PL/PN option would have otherwise voted for the PN?  Some may well have been disgruntled PL voters who wanted to send a message to their own party and would therefore be considered as lost PL votes rather than lost PN ones.

It is a line of thinking that is purely undemocratic: some have even suggested that these parties should not exist in the first place because they offer a hindrance to the opposition to the government. 

Democracy is rooted in choice, and people deserve to have as much of a choice as possible so that they can opt for those who they feel represent them the best.

The amount of people losing faith in the PN and the PL is growing: numbers backing smaller parties are growing, and in some ways it no longer feels like an impossibility for one of these parties to one day make it into Parliament.

Malta is the only country in Europe which is dominated by a two-party system.  People have every right to prefer this to not be the case, should they so wish.  It would be wholly undemocratic to even begin to suggest otherwise.