People hearing without listening

Seeing what is going on in this electoral campaign I could not help recalling the above verse from Simon & Garfunkel’s famous song “The Sound of Silence”. It seems that everything that had to be said has been said and that people are now just repeating themselves. It is now the deaf preaching to the deaf – “people talking without speaking”, “people hearing without listening”.

It is clear to me that the two party system in Malta has exhausted its useful life and has now become restrictive and unsatisfactory. The two parties are no longer enough to represent the opinions of the Maltese. Personally I cannot identify with anyone of the major parties such that I feel that I am excluded from the democratic process.

Both the PN and MLP are dominated by small cliques surrounding the respective leaders and in our system where supporters are not encouraged to discuss let alone disagree, fresh ideas are hard to find. Therefore in our ‘democracy’ we have a small band of people with a fixed opinion who dominate their respective parties. One of these parties then dominates the land by forming the Government. Sometimes parties like to consider themselves as a ‘broad church’ representing various opinions or diverse sectors, but in actual fact they are not. They represent the dominant clique surrounding the leader.

Uncritical supporters are rewarded, thereby generating legions of yes-men. The system of patronage and clientelism supports the ‘democratic’ process. Whoever is in Government has a superlative advantage to dispense advantages in a myriad of ways. A promise of a future reward is far less powerful than an actual reward. I wonder how many politicians in the main parties have never promised rewards in return for votes. If that is not corruption I wonder what is.

We cannot talk of a pluralist society where it comes to Malta. Anyone who dissents is rejected and ‘spitted’ out by the system. Each side of the political spectrum has people who have been rejected. Some go away quietly and disengage from public life while a hardy few try again.

This two party system has created a system where everything is seen in extreme terms, either black or white without any shade in between. One side calls the other as corrupt while the other paints the other side in a sort of doomsday scenario. People who have been criticizing in the past suddenly lose their critical edge and anyone who continues to criticize becomes ‘a groucher’ or whatever. We are at a stage where parties think they own votes and the voter rather than the other way round. The parties consider the voters as the flock and dissenters as wayward sheep to be brought back within the fold.

In my opinion we need to break this system and become more pluralistic by allowing more people of different opinions the chance to be represented in Parliament. The only way to get the system changed is for a sufficient number of us to defy the major parties and vote for change by electing other opinion in the highest manifestation of our democracy i.e. the House of Representatives.