We had barely put our Christmas trees in the box-room and the street decorations had not been removed when the two major political parties resumed their daily tit-for-tats that are, on most occasions, childish and trivial.
The truce that we had over the Yuletide festivities is over, and the Nationalist Party and the Malta Labour Party are at each other’s throats again. They did wish each other well over a drink or two, but with the election only a few weeks away there is no time for niceties. So we are back to where we were in the first half of December, if not worse.
And, as if it was not enough for the PN and the MLP to accuse and counter-accuse each other over the most banal of matters, the two sides have also resorted to attacking each other’s media too.
When will they learn that the more they do this, the more they will distance themselves from the people they supposedly represent? When will they understand that they are doing more harm than good to themselves with such tactics?
Such statements are carried, abridged and toned down, by the independent media simply for the record. This is because their news value is limited, and does little to enhance a healthy political discussion that we so desperately need especially in the days leading to an election.
And yet the parties persist in their stand. What they are doing is simply aiming at the diehard supporters who will respectively vote for them anyway. But they are doing little to convince the undecided, or the so-called floating voters, to make up their mind.
No doubt, officials of the two political parties will be reading this and will, of course, blame it all on the other party. But it would perhaps be better to look within.
The problem is that both the PN and the MLP know that the election will be decided by those few thousand voters who are still to choose between the two – but neither of them is doing anything much to shift the balance in their favour. These people are being ignored by the two political parties when they should be the ones who are targeted.
For example, can the Nationalist Party be believed when it accuses the Malta Labour Party of being “against children’s allowance”, when it was the MLP that introduced it as a social benefit? And, on the other hand, can the MLP be believed when it says that it is concerned about elderly citizens when it is a known fact that they have been well taken care of by successive Nationalist governments?
Who do the PN and MLP think they are kidding?
Such statements are an insult to the intelligence of the average man because they are clearly misleading. If the political parties think that such statements will be taken as facts, then they are both detached from the reality we are living today. The people are more mature than the political parties think, and do not take anything at face value. Not anymore.
The thing is that we are probably still at the beginning, and unfortunately we will have to put up with more once the Prime Minister blows the whistle and announces the date of the election.
So the appeal to both the PN and the MLP is not to continue treating the people as if they are six-year-olds who need to be guided on each and every step they make. The people are able to distinguish between politicians – and parties – who regard them as equals and those who want to try to pull their leg.
The people have a mind of their own and know how to use it.