The anti-free speech brigade is coming for your “hate speech”

Comments

1. 

   wish

   August 22, 2024

   Not only free speeh but also free votes on every issue before parliament. My opinion is that we elect individuals on a party ticket but we expect them to vote according to their conscience not with their party.

   We also need to change how elections are held, my opinion is that Malta and Gozo should be one electoral district with parties only allowing candidates of good repute to contest elections. Parties should conduct due dilegence on each candidate for elections and by due diligence I do not mean their propensity to get elected.

   Reply
   1. 

      Banquo

      August 23, 2024

      I will tackle all your three points.

      First, in parliament, every vote is free, in the sense that every Member of Parliament has the right to vote however one feels like, whether it is due to conscience or some other reason. However, political parties which make it to government need to have some unity to be able to pass their electoral manifestos efficiently.

      The role of ‘whip’ exists not just to whip wayward MPs into line (as the word implies) but to be a bridge between different factions of a party, arriving at unity through negotiation behind the scenes. Without such a role, one might as well not have political parties at all and have all MPs run as independents (not necessarily a bad idea, but people like teams, parties make it easier for individuals to get elected, and they add efficiency to the legislative process).

      Although MPs are ultimately always free to vote for what they think is the best choice, it is not unreasonable that for ‘going against the whip’, there may be consequences. If one is elected on a promise to enact a specific law which was in the party’s electoral manifesto but then one votes against enacting that law, one should not be surprised if one gets ejected from the party’s parliamentary group.

      What we need is not the abolishment of the whip system or political parties, but more MPs who are courageous enough to go against the whip when they really and truly believe that the whip is making a bad decision. Negotiating with the whip about how to make a law better is good thing. Cowering in fear that voting against the whip will destroy your political prospects is not.

      Ultimately, ANY political system’s biggest flaws is having the wrong people within it, not the system itself. Politicians need to be courageous, gracious and genuinely interested in the common good more than in themselves. All political systems can work reasonably well if the people within them are genuinely like that.

      I still cannot believe that not a single government MP decided to vote for the entirely reasonable request of Isabelle Bonnici to hold a public inquiry into her son’s unnecessary death, for example. This was the easiest case for any MP to decide to vote against a whip who had taken the wrong course. It would have instantly made that MP a national hero. Individual MPs failed more than the whip. Enough of them could have rebelled against the whip and the prime minister and either forced them to change their minds or at least shamed them.

      Second, having a single district has some uses but it is not necessarily a panacea to better politics. Small parties would stand a better chance of getting elected, but getting elected on its own means nothing if one has no chance of ever being in government.

      Malta has a system of allocating extra seats to the party that wins the most votes if it has not won enough seats to govern through the electoral process. A single party therefore automatically always has an absolute majority. Small parties keep on harping about the possibility of winning a seat in parliament but they do not speak about the extra-seats-allocation system enough.

      ADPD with two seats in parliament, for example, would not even be the official opposition. It would be the secondary opposition. The first Opposition is mostly powerless in a winner-takes-all system, let alone the second. In foreign parliaments, small parties are relevant because the number of seats is fixed and they get to play kingmakers when larger parties need additional seats to form a governing majority. A single district across the Maltese Islands would therefore solve nothing.

      Besides, having several districts (a system borrowed from the UK, as most of our electoral system is) gives national elections a local flavour, which is not a bad thing, as MPs can get to know their district better. Representing a relatively small number of constituents is more realistic than pretending to be a representative of the whole nation in every decision you make. You know your people and they know you. They vote you in or out depending on some local concerns, among other things.

      Additionally, the Maltese system quickly produces stable and efficient governments (the same thing cannot necessarily be said for Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, etc., which often produce tortuous coalitions) and it allows voters to pick individual candidates regardless of political party, so it is, overall, not intrinsically bad or in need of a complete overhaul.

      On your third point, I fully agree. Parties need to vet their candidates better, starting with their candidates for leaders. It was a terrible decision to ‘democratise’ the leadership position (of both Labour and the Nationalist Party) by opening upvoting to all members. Choosing their leader is really a parliamentary group’s decision to make. They are the representatives of the people with a seat in parliament. They should not delegate the decision of choosing a prime minister or leader of the opposition to diehard party members who are more interested in a siege mentality and to stick it to the other side than choosing someone intelligent and balanced enough for the role.

      When the Nationalist Party parliamentary group chose, they picked Therese Comodini Cachia. When random members chose, they picked Adrian Delia. If the Labour parliamentary had been allowed to choose, they would have picked Chris Fearne. Instead we got stuck with Robert Abela thanks to the political party members who pay an annual fee, hang out at the political party’s ka?in and are not accountable to anyone.

      At least when MPs pick someone bad, we can vote them out, but we cannot vote out members. Letting members choose is not democratic. It is populist.

      Reply
2. 

   Leonard68

   August 22, 2024

   Cut down the number of parliamentary seats to 39 to get rid of the deadwood and reduce the influence of canvassers.

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   1. 

      Tirso

      August 23, 2024

      This would be a major move in the right direction.

      Reply
   2. 

      Banquo

      August 23, 2024

      Malta probably has too many seats for its small population. However, it needs a fixed number of seats more than it needs a smaller number. Malta currently has a system in which any party which wins a majority of votes but not necessarily a majority of seats is awarded extra number of seats to have an absolute majority in parliament. This gives extreme power to the two major political powers and destroys the chances of small parties ever being useful in national elections; and of large parties ever having to learn to be centrist and pragmatic.

      A fixed number of seats would be a game changer for a political party that can win a district or two. In a hung parliament, either the two big parties have to form a grand coalition or the party with just a few seats short of a governing majority reaches an agreement or coalition with a smaller party.

      Malta actually already has this system, as was demonstrated in the recent local government elections in which hung councils had to negotiate with pragmatic, independently elected candidates, sometimes (and wonderfully) resulting in independently elected mayors.

      Reply
3. 

   Banquo

   August 23, 2024

   Mark, the good thing about the Maltese political system is that we do not vote for a political party per se. We vote for individual candidates. Therefore, we can advocate for voting for the decent ones and advocate against voting for the terrible ones of the same party.

   One can support a party selectively with the hope of reaching a better end goal. There is a specific faction (Adrian Delia/Alex Borg types; not sure about Eve Borg Bonello, who is still young and may be ripe for turning) that one can campaign hard against while at the same time still advocating for the likes of Roberta Metsola and Mark Anthony Sammut.

   That is what Daphne Caruana Galizia did when she lost faith in the PN’s (Adrian Delia’s) leadership. To give up hope on the Nationalist and Labour parties completely is effectively to give up on Maltese politics altogether. The reality on the ground means that these two huge parties (who regularly win at least about 45% of Malta’s votes, compared to governments in Europe which are formed with about 30% or less) are absolutely essential for any government to be formed, so responsible voters still must weigh carefully between the big parties they might not like very much.

   Mrs Caruana Galizia did not blindly advocate for the Nationalist Party (she was too smart for that). However, she knew that the best way of keeping Labour awfulness away is to vote Nationalists in. When the leadership of the Nationalist Party turned nasty, she advocated more carefully for specific Nationalist Party candidates. Obviously, she understood the theoretical contribution that decent small-party or independent politicians could make, but she wanted real change, not theoretical.

   My point is that the vote-for-your-preferred-candidate system gives us leeway to campaign against a party’s general direction or a specific party faction while at the same time promoting the candidates we think are really good.

   Those of us who are less dependent on the state could in theory just hunker down in our safe bunkers and watch idiotic politicians from both major parties burn a country to the ground while not affecting us that much. However, yours and Mrs Caruana Galizia’s mentalities are to do good by your Maltese sisters and brothers. That is why you are in the public eye writing endlessly about politics, and that is why you need to find ways to engage (through criticism, not necessarily direct contact) with the major parties.

   To give up on both major political parties completely is to effectively become nihilistic about the future of Malta.

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