This piece starts with the words 'the State' and not 'the People' for the simple reason that in our polity the people are insignificant. To change the title to read 'The People versus the State' would have given overarching importance to an entity that constitutionally speaking is more of an non-entity.

We live in an era where the State is omnipotent and the People are completely powerless. This delusionary style or form of politics, to add insult to injury, we call it 'democracy'. We Maltese are satisfied with the duopoly that has established itself in the first general election since the attainment of independence in 1964 and seem to be stuck in this rat hole. Since then, Malta has migrated from a colony of the United Kingdom to a colony of the duopoly. The two political parties represented in the House co-share power in Malta: they rotate power amongst themselves taking turn to govern Malta and to oppose each other when in opposition.

When a supposedly change of government materialises, nothing really changes. Normally things tend to go to the worse. We are still served by the same mediocrity that served us in the previous legislature. Faces change, the political party machinery that controls government and parliament change but - concretely - nothing really changes. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose (the more things change, the more they stay the same).

The People - you and me - are completely dispossessed of power, not that we are powermongers but because we have an interest in the proper governance of the State. Once the ballot paper is cast (and I cannot say any longer once every five years as frequency of the election date is harder to guess than the numbers on my failed national lottery ticket), it is the people's representatives who assume power on our behalf.

But please do not run away with the false idea that our representatives will consult us before a crucial vote is taken in the House. At face value, it might smack of arrogance on our part to request our representatives to consult us on essential matters of state in the interregnum between one general election and another, but when one rediscovers the Greek etymology of the word 'democracy' one understands that this form of government is about 'rule by the people' and not 'ruling the people'. Our style of democracy works out to be rule by the political party in government that rules Malta. Whilst the political parties think of the people, especially when the crunch comes during election fever, in reality - to be more precise - the people are more of an afterthought.

In parliament, it is an extra-parliamentary organ of the political party that sets the tune - the Parliamentary Group. The latter is not a constitutionally recognised entity of parliament. It is extra-parliamentary, part of a political party's structures, but still nonetheless controls parliament. The delusion is that we think that MPs are representing us the people. Instead, they are representing the political party in government. Yet we have the indecency to call it democracy, not partitocracy. The parliamentary group has captured parliament and its allegiance is neither to parliament, nor to the people, but to the political party in government or in opposition.

With a political system where the winner takes it all and not even the breadcrumbs destined to poor Lazarus are left to the defeated political party, Malta transforms itself - as a state of fact - into a one-party state for the remaining duration of the legislature after the popular vote is cast in a general election. The Prime Minister is enthroned as the newly elected Monarch, the Leader of the Opposition, who is disempowered in the House, is more of the court's (read parliament's) jester. All State functionaries are appointed by the newly elected monarch and, oddly enough for a parliamentary democracy supposedly based on the rule of law, hail from, or sympathise with, the same political party.

In Maltese society the political party is like an octopus - its tentacles are all over the place prepared to control everyone and everything: in the parliamentary group, in ministers' and parliamentary secretaries' offices that are populated by party apparatchiks, in the most important offices of state, in the civil service, the public administration ... name it and they are all there, even if at times invisible to the naked eye.

But where are the people in the governance of the State, the demos (people) of our democracy? Probably a fair answer would be nowhere to be seen. They are like the snail who hides in his or her shell between general elections to come out only on polling day, the only day consented to make a public appearance and made to feel important as a member of society. Once the vote is cast, his or her service are no longer required.

Of course, the government will claim that it continuously consults the electorate through various consultation exercises - white papers, green papers, and other consultation documents, sometimes with everybody, at other times with those anointed few who would benefit from government's proposals. We will also be told that there are certain laws that mandate public consultation such as under planning laws even if, the proforma consultation exercise is carried out to respect the letter rather than the spirit of the law, and these exercises end up in favour of permitting development not safeguarding our cultural and natural heritage in the interests of present and future generations and with sustainable (or is it substantial?) development in mind, and that there is always the possibility of a government called referendum that happens once in a lifetime, and a limited - futile - referendum to repeal a law without however being able to propose something else instead, quite of a take it or leave it arrangement. In our democracy the people are invisible. They are phantoms.

Why have therefore the number of anti-government civil society organisations mushroomed? Why has civil society become more vociferous against government? Is it because the number of stamp collectors has been on the increase? Or because the people are utterly feed up with the arrogant mode of governance that simply ignores their legitimate demands?

Probably the public authority that despises the people most is the Planning Authority. Notwithstanding objections by local councils, resident associations, environmental organisations, and public spirited citizens, day in, day out, the Planning Authority continues to churn out development planning permissions that are to the entire dissatisfaction of the people. Yet the government - that is quite satisfied with a developers-hijacked permitting authority - does not investigate the excessive number of permissions that the Planning Authority issues that are objected to by the people. Nor is the government interested to look how the astronomical number of court reversals of Planning Authority permissions has spiralled. One obvious asks: why should the government care? Once the Planning Authority is pro-development and anti-environment, what's the problem? That is government policy after all.

If there is one public authority that has failed the people, apart from government, is the Planning Authority, the arm of government responsible for the uglification of Malta, the destruction of the environment and the urban sprawl outside the development zone. For this authority, consultation is just a futile proforma exercise undertaken simply to tick the box of legally mandatory procedures established by law needed to issue a permit. The perception that one gets it that the Planning Authority perceives this public consultation procedure to be literally a waste of precious time, an obstacle to its permitting powers that it must nevertheless take in its stride, even if the consultation leads to nowhere except to the permit being authorised to the developers' content and all this notwithstanding the people's objections thereto.

Even the representatives of the people tend to treat the people with disdain. When important votes are taken in the House of Representatives do MPs consult their constituency on how to vote? Of course not! Why should they? There is no general election in sight and, once out of sight, out of mind. Instead, they take their instructions from the party whip, another officer of the political party who controls all MPs. S/he is the puppet master. Both the parliamentary group and the whip are extra-parliamentary, part of the party structure, not of the House of Representatives. To make it more obvious than it is, the Parliamentary Group does not meet in the House but at party headquarters.

For the public administration, the people mean nothing. Look how out pavements have been turned in extensions of shops, bars, cafeteria, restaurants making it impossible to walk on a supposed pavement. Look how government changes laws and policies to remove its own accountability as when the Criminal Code was amended to deny citizens a right to request inquiring magistrates the opening of an inquiry in the case of corruption by politicians and the acolytes, or how the Planning Authority - not to enforce the law - has removed the possibility of anonymous complaints regarding development planning infringements. Look how government disposes of government land to appease the greedy appetite of its developer friends and financial supporters.

One does understand why the people in Malta are more of an annoying afterthought in the governance of the state. Our constitution is not one of those that starts with the words, "We the people". Our constitution barely refers to the people and to their position in the governance of the state for the people have barely any say in this regard. Who cares about the wishes of the people? Once in power, the people are forgotten! Democracy ends when the vote is cast in a general election and returns a few years later when a new general election is called. Democracy is limited to those 15 hours when we vote. Then it is suspended pro tempore and the oligarchy takes over the running of Malta to be interrupted again by another fifteen hours of democracy when another general election is called.

Kevin Aquilina is Professor of Law at the Faculty of Laws, University of Malta