Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/649887
maltatoday, SUNDAY, 6 MARCH 2016 24 Opinion The two-party system has failed. Get over it Y ou know you've hit a raw nerve in this country when supporters of both parties start calling you names. Not 'responding to your arguments', mind you. Just calling you names, which is the surest sign they wouldn't actually recognise an argument if one just happened to sodomise them in a dark alley (as proper arguments tend to do). Having said that, I was also surprised by the sheer number of people (many of whom I don't know, and don't know me) who reacted positively to my article last Wednesday, under the headline 'Wanted: a quantum leap forward'. I think I can guess why, too. In that article, I pointed out how Malta's endemic two-party system has utterly failed. Or, to be more mathematically precise: how it has actually succeeded… but only in creating a situation in which failure is the only possible outcome, every single time. Under normal circumstances, I would describe that as an interesting paradox, and no more. Circumstances are however less than ordinary. The situation I described above has now become so transparent, so blatant, so ridiculously 'in your face'… that it is now visible to absolutely everyone – especially the ones who are only ever capable of 'thinking' along the blinkered dynamics of two-party logic. Those are in fact the ones who can see it most clearly of all… and they are naturally the ones who hate me most for pointing it out. Nationalists call me a 'Labour apologist'. Labourites call me a 'Nationalist stooge'. And of course, each and every one them knows perfectly well that it is simply impossible for any one person to be both those things at the same time. Already, the 'logic' of the two- party system can be seen to have failed. It's right there, staring you all in the face: the word 'FAIL', spelt out in large letters, right across our country's political divide. But let's stay with it for a while, and see where it takes us. Why do people resort to insulting people like me (and, to be fair, all the others who have been making the same points in the last week: I won't take all the credit myself, far from it) if not because… they know we are right? Yes, indeed. Right: the one thing the real party apologists and stooges have ever been in their entire lives. Because 'being right', in this context, is a position you can only ever find yourself in once you remove those goddamn partisan blinkers once and for all. And that is something most people just can't ever bring themselves to do. No matter, though. Even with the childish blinkers still clamped firmly to their heads… the party stooges still know I'm right when I say that Nationalist corruption stinks just as bad as Labour corruption. They know I'm right when I say that Labour betrayed this country's aspirations, by capitalising on a genuine thirst for change in the most cynical, unforgivable way possible... i.e, by surfing the wave of national discontent, just to ensure that all the goodies would start flowing in their direction for a change. They also know I'm right each time I argue that the Nationalist Opposition just doesn't give a shit about 'good governance' (never did, never will)… and they even know why I'm right about it, too. The reason is as simple as it is predictable. It's because the Nationalist Party equates the adjective 'good' with 'Nationalist'… and 'bad' with Labour. Yes, folks, it really is as simple as that. As long as the PN is in power, things are 'good' (regardless how they actually govern); if it's Labour, it's bad. That is why people like Daphne Caruana Galizia left no stone unturned to expose the truly execrable Konrad Mizzi/Keith Schembri quagmire… yet when Austin Gatt and (especially) Ninu Zammit were exposed over entirely analogous dealings, the same Daphne Caruana Galizia used her position and influence to minimise and pooh-pooh the story… just as she minimised and pooh-poohed every stinking revelation of Nationalist corruption since she started writing articles in 1992. Yet in the case of Ninu Zammit, the stink was even worse. The former Minister of Public Works (Lorry Sant's old portfolio, remember?) opened his Swiss bank account in 2004, and later transferred it to the British Virgin Islands... as notorious a tax haven as Panama. Thanks to Wikileaks, we now know it contained just over three million euros. So here's the question Daphne Caruana Raphael Vassallo