The trials and tribulations of a Maltese general election have no equal anywhere else in the democratic world, but the supposed name of the game remains very much the same: who gets more votes, wins. It is again the reality of 2008 during which what was read as a swelling movement for change actually fizzled morosely out into something that resembles a flat tyre.

In true Maltese tradition, the two big parties played their parts well and the electorate was shepherded out to vote, which, funnily enough, it did in a majority against the incumbent. Even the leadership popularity race ended in an unexpected secondary role for the incumbent, and this, surprisingly, after umpteen surveys that had always put him comfortably ahead. And yet, electoral law conditions eventually favoured the party in government. And the real change has to wait.

Contrary to what these opening paragraphs may imply, I am no election analyst, but merely a left-wing writer with, modesty apart, a genuine desire to see this country do well and its

people prosper. It is, I’m sure, a feeling that is shared by a vast number of people, of all political colours and hues, on these Islands. That we all vote differently may be ascribed to a variety of circumstantial reasons and personal aspirations, all of which make up a distinctive electoral brew every five years or so.

If the name of the game is winning more votes as per the legal arrangements of the day, conviction has to be the fulcrum of all that fires up one’s political enthusiasm. If there is anything lacking in Maltese politics, it is certainly not enthusiasm. For such a small population to garner – within such a restricted period of time – this amount of impressive manifestations of the masses is a curiosity that has always fascinated the foreign observer. It should, however, make us all realise that perhaps we are playing the game very much the wrong way.

While the rest of the world has moved forward to other methods and arenas, we have remained stuck to the same old tactics that no longer give the desired results. Labour’s belief in a massive vote for change did not materialise, while the governing Nationalists saw a comfortable majority of five seats shrivel to one of a single seat that will obviously need the cooperation of the new Opposition to be able to work on both the domestic and foreign/EU fronts. It is certainly not the scenario either of them would have hoped for when they embarked on their five-week election campaign.

Sadly for Dr Sant, at the helm of the MLP, this has been his swan song. It is certainly not good to see a man of his calibre, particularly his intellect, guts and integrity, leaving the leadership of a party he has served with such loyalty and dedication. The democratic imbalance within the Maltese media has ruthlessly worked against him since his very inception into the party leadership. That he actually beat the old “unbeatable” at the first go, way back in 1996, will remain the highlight of a leadership career that, for a time, seemed even able to inexplicably force the media to its knees. As immediate history would have it, however, not for too long.

But Alfred Sant in the MLP leadership will also be remembered as the one and only Maltese politician ever who honestly tried to unhinge the business of government from the strict party loyalties of yesteryear. While his own rank and file found it inconceivable, so much so that they abstained in their droves from voting in the forced 1998 election, the Opposing Nationalists exploited it. Their top civil servants merely chose to throw spokes in the wheels of the Sant Administration and their politicians simply made sure the New Labour policy of national reconciliation at the place of work could not work.

Was all that really in the name of the game? I very much doubt it. If the strategies of dishonesty, disloyalty and sheer bigotry are to be expected as the yardstick of Maltese national politics, then it is no wonder we are in the state that we are, ie political nothingness. Neither of the two parties can have been happy with their results last Sunday, while the so-called third parties continue to face a kind of elector apathy that is grossly unfair to them.

What happens next, one hopes, will be a new chapter in Maltese politics. This polarised condition of a nation that somehow cannot look forward just as much as it cannot desperately depend on the past, is working against the very fibres of our society. The social divide has to be addressed if we are not to end up as a nation of two tribes – not Labourites or Nationalists, but the few “haves” with their multitude of hangers-on and the many have-nots.