The decision taken by the Nationalist Party to withdraw four candidates from the forthcoming local council elections is rather strange. It was bound to backfire, and indeed it has done so already.

PN candidates Joseph Brownrigg and Lawrence Grixti in Zejtun, and Emmanuel Saliba and Matthew Frendo in Marsa, pulled out of the election minutes before the deadline for applications expired, after having previously submitted their candidature.

This means that there are now just enough candidates to fill the seats in both councils, and no election will be held in these two localities. Marsa will therefore have a council made up of five Labourites and two Nationalists, while Labour will have an even bigger majority in Zejtun, 8-1.

First of all, the decision means that the PN has already lost one councillor from its total. At present, Marsa council is composed of a 5-2 Labour majority – the same as it will be from March 2005 to March 2008. Zejtun council is at present composed of seven Labour councillors and two Nationalists.

But the last-minute withdrawal goes beyond just losing one councillor, and the MLP was quick to pounce on the issue, interpreting the move as a sign of weakness on the part of the government.

The MLP is saying that the PN decided to withdraw its four candidates because it feared a big loss in these two localities, and that by not allowing the residents there to vote, the PN will be mitigating the defeat it will suffer overall on 12 March.

It said the PN had resorted to such a move because it cannot afford to lose heavily again as it did last June in the European Parliament and local council elections.

Considering that most of the 13,000 who would have voted in Zejtun and Marsa would have done so for the MLP, Labour is right to say that the results obtained by the two parties will be closer, since the elections in these two localities will not be held.

And so the MLP has turned its guns on the PN, saying that its move was intended to cut down on its losses at a time when the government is against the ropes.

For the past few weeks, the MLP has been insisting that the people are fed up with the government and has held a series of events to expose the people’s frustrations. The PN decision on Zejtun and Marsa have only helped to strengthen the MLP’s position.

The MLP has gone further than that, by quoting a statement made by PN general secretary Joe Saliba last year when the MLP resorted to court action against people who, it felt, did not have a right to vote.

At that time, the PN said that the MLP was aiming to deny people the right to vote and should try to win over support with political arguments, rather than by trying to have people struck off the electoral register. Mr Saliba had also said that the MLP, at the time, had tried to reduce people’s participation in elections.

The MLP said that the PN is doing the same now – trying to keep people away from the polls – and it was doing so for purely partisan reasons.

The PN’s decision to withdraw the four candidates was taken to try to gain some form of political advantage because it would reduce the number of first count votes the MLP will obtain next month.

But in the end the decision has backfired and it is the MLP which has gained from it, because the move has been largely interpreted as a desperate attempt to contain the PN’s losses.

The PN has shot itself in the foot on this one.