Irrespective of whether the Nationalists’ fresh trouncing at the polls is tantamount to a forthcoming election victory or not, it remains an undeniable fact that Lawrence Gonzi has proved to be a serial loser ever since he assumed the leadership of the party and the premiership of the country.

The excuse that local elections merely represent one third of the electorate holds no water, since Dr Gonzi also came a cropper when the European Parliament elections were held, which were nationwide and not local.

Time has proven that the Nationalists’ dismal perform-ance is not merely a case of mid-term blues. They lost barely one year after being re-elected on the EU ticket and continued to do so up to the present day, when elections can only be 15 months away at the most. Hardly enough time for a change of fortunes, by any stretch of the imagination.

The argument that the turnout in certain Nationalist localities was low due to bad weather holds no ground. Using such a yardstick, this should have impacted negatively on Labour too. The low turnout in places like Swieqi showed that the Nationalists wanted to send a message of protest in a locality where they happen to traditionally have an overwhelming majority.

The point the Nationalists seem to be missing is that they have not taken seriously the findings of the inquiry they commissioned when they lost the European Parliament elections.

Even though this year they tried to repeat the SmartCity card in the same way they did last year, this seems to have had a negligible effect on voters at large. The same can be said for the way they mobilised central government resources until election eve in the hope of covering up the deficiencies of Nationalist-led local councils.

John Dalli could not have been more clear and frank than in his comments last Sunday in another section of the local media. Having evidently written his piece before the results were known, he stated that if the majority of those who normally vote Nationalist, and who should be voting wholeheartedly for the candidates on the PN list, fail to do so “then they would suggest that there must be something wrong – very wrong – in the people’s perception of the government and the Nationalist party. There could be something very wrong in the way the party managers are making their assessments of the people and their moods.”

Where I disagree with John is that although the Nationalists would be right to demand a programme of action and reform that would restore the PN to the level of support that it enjoyed and that he claimed “it merits”, I feel that it is too late in the day for any substantial changes in public opinion to take place.

For its part, Labour has learnt four important lessons from this local election, which should guide us in the run-up to the general election:

It should continue to keep close to the electorate;

It should continue to keep its feet on the ground;

It should constantly bear in mind that every vote counts (as evidenced by the additional majorities it could have won);

And that party unity and teamwork should continue to guide us in our future endeavours.

Deplorable

Although I am not a hunter, in my constituency I have both hunters and environmentalists. Some hunters have asked the MLP to clarify its position on hunting and I think Alfred Sant was quite clear when he recently appeared on Xarabank, even though points of further clarification would do no harm. If only the Nationalists had been as honest and straightforward over the past years and months.

While I do not in any way intend to deny hunters their right to protest in a peaceful manner, I cannot but deplore and condemn the irrational and inexcusable behaviour of those few who chose to attack journalists and photographers who were merely doing their duty, as were those members of the Police Corps who were in town to ensure that law and order prevailed.

Although of those injured I know best Brandon Pisani and Julia Farrugia, I would like to extend my solidarity with the other guys involved from The Times, The Malta Independent and Illum. They are all professional people without any hidden agendas who were merely doing their job to the best of their ability.

That is surely not the way for certain hunters to score points or win arguments.

These people might have been taken for a ride by the Nationalist government both in 2003 and again recently, but whoever they might have been protesting against, those who resorted to violence, arguably to give vent to their frustrations, merely played into the hands of their worst critics.

Within this same context, while lauding your newspaper for reproducing the MLP statement of condemnation virtually in toto, I would like to deplore another local daily, and PBS, which chose to pick a sentence at random from the MLP statement without making it clear that our condemnation was total and without any reservation, while also adding that those who committed such criminal offences gave a bad name to the other members of their organisation.

Within the same context of violent action, I would like to express my solidarity with Hamrun mayor Luciano Busuttil in view of the attack perpetrated against his family and residence.

‘Babel’: a thinking man’s film

I recently had occasion to watch Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s Babel and must confess having been highly stimulated by this complex, thought-provoking and intellectually challenging film, where the structure might be disjointed but where ultimately all the pieces end up fitting together.

Having not yet watched Scorsese’s The Departed, I cannot judge whether or not Babel should have won the Oscar for best film, but based on the reviews I have read, it seems that the Scorsese film is far more conventional by comparison.

The unifying theme of Babel is globalisation, which makes it indeed a film for our times with the various characters failing to communicate in an ever-shrinking globalised world.

Someone recently remarked that Babel might disappoint, since there are no villains in it and although crimes are committed, none are intentional.

The film is known to have left some people I know feeling somewhat cold and indifferent, but I personally found it to be forceful in its character development, in spite of its inherent complexity.

A must-see for all those eager to catch up with a truly thinking man’s (or woman’s) film! Even if the film might not capture your imagination, the superb cinematography alone is worth the price of admission.

e-mail: [email protected]

Leo Brincat is opposition spokesman for Foreign Affairs and IT