10 Aug When three is not a crowd
As tempted as I was to torture myself, last week I purposely didn’t watch the live debate between the Prime Minister and the leader of Opposition on Xarabank. A few days later however I watched a recording of it because I thought that having the option to forward, pause, and throw up whenever the need arises, would keep my arteries from popping.
I was wrong.
Even with the option of whizzing through the boring, childish, idiotic, predictable and baseless parts, the whole farce still managed to get me hot under the collar.
My blood pressure rose to dangerous heights not because I wasn’t expecting a pathetic level of argumentation, but because following the last general election, this debate was the strongest and most startling reminder of how our two-party system is screwing our country.
The quality (or rather lack) of such debates is a loud and clear reminder of how our archaic electoral system – a system that keeps making it impossible for a third or even a fourth party to get into parliament – is doing a ginormous disservice to our democracy.
It was only Arnold Cassola’s ten-minute appearance (as well as Peppi losing his cool with the happy clappers) that stopped me from throwing a knife at the TV and screaming bloody murder.
Just as expected, Muscat and Busuttil spent most of their time snapping at each other’s throats and interrupting each other. They reminded me of those unhappily married couples who live in the security of knowing that no matter how badly they screw up, neither one of them is going anywhere.
Just like bad students in a class of even worse students, the two parties have figured out that they only need to be, (or rather come across as being), a tad cleverer, a tad less dishonest, and a tad quicker than their peers, in order to make it through with flying colours
With Busuttil trying to defend 25 years of a Government that he had very little to do with, and Muscat strategically digging into places he knows hurt the Nationalists during the last election, the whole debate quickly became a tit for tat, death-by-comparison-comedy.
Muscat threw ‘direct orders’ and ‘arloggi tal-Lira’ at Busuttil’s head, whilst Busuttil threw ‘electricity pardons’ and ‘meritocracy’ at Muscat’s bruised ego.
Yawn!
And in the meantime, the voter became none the wiser, and as per usual, even less spoilt for choice. The saddest thing is that even though an entire arsenal of dirty weapons was brought out of the closet, neither one tried hard enough to convince with real facts, figures, and convincing arguments. Their so-called blows were cushioned and disguised behind crass jibes, which I know the Maltese love, but do nothing for the country in the long run.
But when Arnold Cassola, the Chairman of Alternattiva Demokratika was brought in, the difference in style was almost blinding. Clearly, the guy has nothing to lose, has no interest in brown nosing either one of them, and has no hopes for glory in Maltese Parliament, so he says it as just the way he thinks it is. He hit one side then the other, then the other again and as soon as you thought that he was going to take a side, he turned to push the other way once again.
During those ten minutes, both Busuttil and Muscat were on their toes and at their weakest. Up until Cassola’s appearance, Busuttil was constantly warning the Prime Minister telling him to ‘be careful’ about this and that, reminiscent of the scaremongering tactics the Nationalists used prior to the election. But then, towards the end of Cassola’s speech, it was the PM who was telling Cassola to ‘be careful,’ again sending a shiver down my spine with the ‘loaded’ warning.
In just under ten minutes, Cassola called Muscat and Busuttil children and offered each one of them a pacifier and a nappy. This was the only self-indulgent comment that Cassola parted with, and of course, Peppi told him off for it. But Cassola swiftly moved on to pushing both the PM and Simon Busuttil to divulge their positions on what matters to the people. He pushed them for a position on spring hunting, irregular immigration and party financing, making those ten minutes the most informative and useful, at least to me. But Cassola wasn’t done yet. Still within his ten minutes, he even managed to explain the crucial difference between the Nationalist’s objections to the Citizenship scheme and the objections of Alternattiva Demokratika.
Cassola can do this because Alternattiva is the only party that can afford and has the guts to call a spade a spade. Unlike the Opposition in a two party system, a third party is not afraid to agree with the administration when it feels that it should, and at the same time has no qualms in disagreeing when it needs to.
Unfortunately, because of Cassola’s final words, which came across as a strong stance against the PM, many argue that Arnold Cassola’s place is within the Nationalist party, but Cassola is right where he should be – right there in the middle saying it like it is. The only thing that should change is not the party he represents but his chances of getting Alternattiva into parliament. But of course, this is not in the interest of either one of the two big parties, because if this happened, they’d actually have to convince and debate like adults.
First published in The Malta Indpendent on Sunday in March 2014
