No venue has been booked for the 2008 Malta Song For Europe yet because Malta’s forthcoming general election is already disrupting the festival, escmalta.com reported.
As the general election will be held in the first half of 2008, sources close to the organisers of the 2008 Malta Song For Europe festival, said they are having problems finding a venue for the end of January.
Although no date has been fixed, many have been saying that the general election will probably be held sometime between February and April, meaning that the date previously indicated for the festival could coincide with the time when the electoral campaign is at its peak.
This has led the Maltasong board to puk an alternative date for the Malta Song For Europe festival, which is expected to be of less interest this time, due to the higher interest expected on the political scene.
Escmalta.com’s sources said that the Maltasong board has been looking for venues in the last two weekends of January, since it is almost certain that the general election would not be held in January, as this would mean that Prime Minister Gonzi would have to announce the election over the Christmas period, which will definitely not be the case.
Another factor that leads it to believe that the election will not be held in January is that Malta enters the Eurozone on 1 January.
The problem the Maltasong board is facing is that the two suitable venues where to hold the festival – the Mediterranean Conference Centre and Malta Fairs and Conventions Centre - are both already booked for other activities on the dates requested.
This has led the board to look for other venues, but no suitable alternative has been found so far. This means that the singers who have made it to the second phase have no clue on what date it will be held.
The board would like this date to be close to the festival itself but since there is no confirmed venue and date for the festival, the singers cannot make plans.
A singer told this website that this situation is leading him/her not to accept other engagements since he/she does not want to be tied up with other activities on the same date of the second phase, thus this specific singer is losing out on other events which are also important for his/her singing career.
The question that arises at this point is whether this venue crisis could have been avoided since members of the Maltasong board (like all other Maltese citizens) knew that the general election was going to be held in the first half of 2008. Shouldn’t the date and venue be confirmed earlier and not just a month before the actual festival is meant to take place?