Looking back at these three weeks of electoral campaigning, one thing that stands out is Labour’s unpreparedness for its big appointment with the electorate. It becomes even more startling when you remember that election day is coming a year earlier than is normal and that it is unlikely that the Party’s top officials were not informed well beforehand and told, in good time, to get busy.

Now, it’s not as if Labour has never lied in an electoral campaign before. But this time it’s not even capable of lying well. There was a time when Muscat could keep a straight face while promising that, for example, members of regulatory authorities would be appointed on merit and even publically elected. This time he looks a child with hands and face covered in chocolate insisting that, no, he did not touch the cake.

 

IVF

Let’s start with a topic close to my heart. Way back in 2005, as chair of Parliament’s Standing Committee on Social Affairs, together with the other members, we prepared a report on the future of in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) in Malta. Up until then, IVF had been an unregulated sector that not only made it open to unethical practices but also excluded it from being offered as part of the National Health Service.

A lot of time and energy went into the preparation of that report. We listened to expert opinions from various disciplines, determined what would be the widest possible consensus and presented the document to Parliament. The recommendations formed the basis of the Embryo Protection Act, thanks to which we showed that such a sensitive sector can be regulated in a manner that is correct, fair and proportionate.

Now, Labour is pandering to the lie that, if the Nationalists are elected next month, we will ban IVF. Twenty years separate the birth of the first IVF baby in Malta in the early nineties and the 2013 election, and during that time the Nationalist Party in government has not enacted a straightforward, categorical ban. Does our track record not say anything about where we really stand on the subject?

 

That knock on the door

Labour’s unpreparedness can also be seen in the way it has not come to this campaign with well-informed counter-arguments to legitimate criticism. Instead, it has to resort to high-handed tactics.

I remember a political refugee once saying that the greatest thing about living in a free country is going to bed in the evening, knowing that your sleep will not be disturbed by the proverbial knock on the door from agents of the state asking you to go with them.

This week that knock came on the doors of Pierre Portelli, Content and Business Director of the publisher of this newspaper, and Jacob Borg, a journalist from the Times. Their ‘crime’ was to publish official reports that made it clear it was no longer a case of “corruption allegations” but “corruption facts” and that the police were refusing to act when there were serious grounds for, at least, bothering to investigate.

Dragged by the police in front of a court, threatened with jail, Pierre and Jake did what real journalists do. They held their ground. They did not succumb to pressure. They did not reveal their sources.

 

Reno and Pilatus

Meanwhile, the national broadcaster defends its decision not to report the sworn testimony given in Court by the whistleblower who first linked the ownership of Egrant with the Prime Minister’s wife. Incredibly, Head of News Reno Bugeja claimed that this was an issue between employer and employee, with no news value.

There were no such qualms when the story first broke and PBS broadcast a comment from the Prime Minister who dismissed the whistleblower as a fraud even though, at such an early stage, he could hardly have known who she was.

Fairness and consistency matter for little now. Labour is left with only crude methods to try and save its ailing campaign.