Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1421642
10 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 24 OCTOBER 2021 OPINION Raphael Vassallo A new political party? Mamma Mia! I remember reading somewhere that the 1970s Swedish pop sen- sation ABBA was about to make a 'comeback'. But… as a new Mal- tese political party? Contesting the next election? Now THAT's something you don't get to see every day… And I have to admit: I, for one, just can't wait to attend their first live conce… I mean, 'mass meeting'. In fact, I can picture it all already: the lights dim; silence descends upon the crowd; and a voice blares out from the speak- ers… 'Ladies and Gentlemen, please give it up for the latest Christian rightwing political par- ty to hit the Maltese ballot sheet… the one and only… ABBA!" The crowd goes wild; and out pops Ivan Grech Mintoff onto the stage, to the tune of 'Dancing Queen'… I mean, come on: it doesn't get more glorious than that, does it? And besides: can you imagine what their campaign is going to sound like? Not only do they have an instant smash-hit anthem, in the form of: 'Take A Chance On Me' (why, you weren't expecting 'The Winner Takes It All', were you?) – but they also benefit from a pre-written theme song for prac- tically every single electoral issue. Corruption? 'Money, Money, Money'. Data Protection? 'Know- ing Me, Knowing You (Aha!)'; Contraception? 'Does Your Mother Know?'…. All the way down to Ivan Grech Mintoff's eventual (and inevitable) concession speech, which is like- wise all ready to just be quoted: "Though I never thought that we could lose… there's no regret. (And if I had to do the same again, I would, my friend… Etcetera.)" Seriously, though: the whole thing is so darn well-scripted, it could almost have been com- posed by Stig Andersen himself. Heck, I myself might even end up giving them my number one, just for their choice of name…. Ah, but not everyone, it seems, is as enthusiastic as myself about Malta's newest 'Super Trooper' on the block. Take the Electoral Commission, for instance. Judging by its pre-emptive efforts to sabo- tage ABBA's candidature, before it actually happened… I can only surmise that their own reaction was something along the lines of: "A new political party? Mamma Mia, here we go again! My, my, how can we resist you…?" And how, pray tell, did the Elec- toral Commission try to 'resist' Ivan Grech Mintoff's new Chris- tian rightwing political party – or, more specifically, prevent it from actually registering in time for the next election? Why… by objecting to the name, of course. And not, inci- dentally, out of any concern that the 'real' ABBA may sue the 'fake' one for plagiarism (even if, quite frankly, Yahweh could easily sue them both, for 'taking his name in vain')… … nor even because Maltese electoral law precludes political parties from naming themselves after well-known pop or rock bands, either (which, let's face it, I would more or less understand. For if the idea catches on among the Maltese Death Metal crowd… we'd end up with political parties named 'Abysmal Torment', 'Car- nivorous Horde', or even 'Grue- some Funeral'…) And I need hardly add that it wasn't – couldn't have been, in fact – anything to do with the new party's ideological stance on any particular issue, either. It would, after all, be a little egregious for the Commission to object to AB- BA on the grounds of its… let's say, extreme views on abortion… when those same views happen be shared by all other mainstream parties, including both Labour and PN. Nor could the Commission have realistically objected to Ivan Grech Mintoff's anti-immigration rhetoric… not after repeatedly ap- proving the candidature of Nor- man Lowell's Imperium Europa, for every EP election since 2005… No, the reason has to be another; and the official one given by the Electoral Commission itself was that the word 'ABBA' is… wait for it… "too short to be abbreviated". (And, as George Clooney so often reminded us in all those TV ads: "No Abbreviation, No Party…") Hmmm. Now: not to be unkind, or anything… but if the Electoral Commission is so obstinately hell- bent on depriving people of some of their most fundamental human rights – for that, ultimately, is what its actions would have amounted to, had they succeeded – the least it could do is come up with a slightly more credible pretext. 'Too short to be abbreviated', indeed. Why… that's too stupid to even be printed. For one thing, because it only means that the word doesn't actually NEED to be abbreviated at all (Duh!); and for another… because, at four characters long, 'ABBA' is actual- ly shorter than some of the other abbreviations already approved by the same Commission. Like 'AD/PD', for instance (and oh look: another political party to name itself after a rock band: this time, a dyslexic version of Aus- tralia's most famous Rhythm 'N' Blues export…) All of which leaves me with the sneaking little suspicion that the Electoral Commission may have had other motives to try to (ahem) 'abort' ABBA, at a point before it got a chance to be born. And they seem to have a lot in common with that one time (at bootcamp, etc.), when the same Electoral Commission had pre- vented Alternattiva Demokratika from using the colour green to signify their party on the ballot sheet… while, naturally, allowing Labour and PN to use red and blue, respectively. Or when it chose not to issue any public clarification about Maltese voting procedures, when – before the 2013 election – both Labour and PN were telling the electorate that 'you can't vote across party lines' (which is, in fact, what our entire electoral sys- tem was originally designed for in the first place...) Or every other time, at every other bootcamp, when its actions and decisions always seemed rooted in the central concept that Malta – by some sort of Divine Decree – is, was, and forever shall remain, a Two-Party State… And OK, fair enough: in most – if not all – of those cases, the Commission could always argue that its hands were tied by the precise wording of Maltese elec- toral law… which, in turn, might explain some of the other injus- tices that small parties complain about so often in this country. Not least, the fact that a polit- ical party needs to represent a minimum of 16.6% of the total Maltese electorate – that's over 50,000 votes, folks - just to get elected to Parliament; and this, at a time when the average EU na- tional threshold is closer to 5%; and when no small party in Malta (with the ominous exception of Imperium Europa, at European level) has ever actually managed to surpass even the 3% mark... At the same time, however, it only reinforces the point that the entire Maltese political landscape is grotesquely skewed to the ad- vantage of the two established parties, at the expense of all oth- ers… and that, in in itself, merely cements the perception that the Electoral Commission – being, incidentally, directly appointed by the two parties themselves – is but a small cog in the machinery of a much broader, and more per- manent, injustice.