Neither Fish nor Flesh

 

I once viewed Alternattiva as a sign of hope. About 15 years since their founding, however, I have long since had to write them off as a failed experiment. All the years of hard work by some rather talented people have not brought them even close to electing a single MP and have resulted in the realization of very few, if any, of their actual political goals. This is quite an impressive failure when one considers that many of their original causes, at least, have the wind of history in their sails, and when one considers the ideological bankruptcy and the practical incompetence of the two major parties. I believe that there is one rather obvious reason why this has happened, and this is lack of focus.

With its very limited resources, Alternattiva should have decided early on what its main raison d'etre is. (1) Is it to break the PN-MLP duopoly and give Malta a true multi-party democracy? (2) Is it to achieve certain environmental goals (control of hunting and of the destruction of Malta's countryside)? (3) Is it to give a voice to fashionable and well-heeled young people who may have left-wing sympathies but disdain the MLP? (4) Is it to achieve a more secular and liberal regime in the field of personal freedoms (the issue of divorce, for example)?

If the goal is (1) then the ideal strategy should have been to target almost exclusively the more sophisticated section of the PN electorate located in Sliema and its suburbs (which I believe is the only significant part of the Maltese electorate that is ready to abandon the traditional parties). The best vehicle for doing this would have been a party that reflects this part of the electorate, i.e. a centre-right pro-business and somewhat libertarian party on the lines of Germany's Free Democrats. A green party just doesn't do the trick here. The only hope is if the major parties miraculously agree on a new electoral law that may ultimately lead to their own decline. Fingers crossed.

If the goal is (2) then one might question the wisdom of contesting elections at all. An active and 'above-parties' pressure group that could have nurtured its influence over the electorate and used it to persuade the political parties to adopt its programme would probably have achieved better results. It might be argued that by contesting general elections without any serious hope of electing any MPs, Alternattiva is simply taking committed environmentalists out of the equation as far as first preference votes are concerned. The Hunters' lobby has not made the same mistake.

If the goal is (3) then this could have been achieved with much less effort and without having to contest elections at all. Maybe efforts and resources would have been better spent on the publication of a left-wing newspaper of the Monde Diplomatique type, for example.

If the goal is (4) then this would probably have been better achieved by following strategies (1) or (2).