Everyone told me I would hate election campaign home visits and some, for reasons best known to them, thought I’d skip them altogether. The contrary turned out to be true. Eight times out of 10 the experience is warm, enjoyable, humanly enriching or educational. Sometimes it’s all of that at once.

Unfortunately I’m the worst home visitor ever. I just can’t seem to treat these encounters as the political equivalent of speed dating which is de rigeur if you want to get elected. Instead, I sit down, accept the offer of tea and biscuits and stay there for as long as my hosts are willing to spend with me. Invariably, my canvasser is gurgling expletives when I emerge 30 or 40 minutes later.

Sometimes, in these meetings, you get to meet two or three generations of the same family. You realise that what the third generation can now take for granted, was achingly absent in the early life of the first. Thus, I’m in a household in my constituency - the ninth district – meeting with a delightfully perky grandmother in her 80s and one of her daughters, who is a middle-age lady with a son in his late teens. He walked in towards the end of my visit laden with books. He is doing an MCAST course that links in directly with his future employer’s business. He will go from school desk to high-tech workbench without a day of job hunting.

The grandmother told me her story. She had given birth six times but five children survived. The one who died however, passed away not at birth but when she was already almost three years of age. The family was devastated, the mother deeply scarred for the rest of her life. Today, she explains, the condition her three-year old died of, would have been cured rapidly and comfortably in a state-of-the art hospital that, of course, was unavailable. “I would have given my right eye to have then what we have now,” she said quietly.

Other times of course, you meet those who feel that satisfaction and success has eluded them. “I ain’t voting,” they’ll say, looking me squarely in the eye and expecting me to get up and leave for greener (bluer?) pastures, “for no one!” I lean forward, take another biscuit from the packet and settle in for the conversation. The reasons given vary. Sometimes they are strikingly sincere.

One gentleman in his mid-50s explained to me that his vote was the only voice he had and he got to use it once every five years. He felt that if he voted PN he would not be drawing attention to the various slights he felt that he had been dealt. “Name the worst one,” I asked. It was the cost of living. He was tired of pedalling just to keep up. “Precisely because you can only be heard in this way every five years, why waste your vote? Vote Labour or AD if you think they can improve your life, why don’t you?” I asked. He looked at me to see if I was mocking or challenging him. When he saw that I was asking in earnest, he shrugged and said “What are they gonna do, lower the international price of cereals or meat or fuel oil?”

There still are people out there who are hurting. People who feel that the benefits of the economic upturn have not fully filtered down towards them yet. Some of them want to vent their frustration, want us to know they’re not part of the good news. If a vote smashed to pieces on the ground is what they think will draw our attention, that vote will be smashed. They may or may not realise that by not withholding their vote they are pushing Labour closer to victory, even if they openly express lack of confidence in it as a viable government. If that happens, will their lot improve? Will anybody’s?

Each time the PN looked to the future and pointed out a way, Labour said nay. Now, on the deficit, EU membership, the euro, local councils, pluralism in broadcasting, VAT, and so many more issues, many are enjoying the benefits of these policies. With respect to those who are still struggling to get there we have a choice: We can commit to the PN’s ideal Biex hadd ma jibqa lura and show active solidarity and meaningful sensitivity. Or, we can bask in our good life and ignore them. If abandoned though, a number of them are likely to abstain from the political process and augment Labour’s chances of winning the elections. Then we will all fall behind.

Dr Georg Sapiano is a Nationalist Party candidate on the ninth district