The strategy behind Alternattiva Demokratika’s election campaign was clear even before one of its local councillors, Rene Rossignaud, decided to call it a day and spill the beans last Wednesday.

AD has been attacking the Nationalist Party head-on all throughout the past legislature, but more blatantly over the past few weeks as the election came closer. They have made it their mission to try to wrest away a few votes from the PN fold by regularly making anti-government and anti-PN statements, little realising that they were fast becoming another Malta Labour Party.

AD and the MLP may not have the same political objectives, but the way they simply throw out any government move, even the most positive, puts them in the same boat.

What AD has not realised is that, by becoming more and more like the MLP, they will not push disgruntled Nationalists towards them. Disgruntled Nationalists may be angry with their party, but in their majority they will never vote for the MLP. And neither will they vote AD now that the Greens have become a photocopy of the MLP. It shows how feeble AD’s politics are.

The funny thing is that AD never loses a chance of speaking about their dream of forming a coalition, which would presumably be with the PN. How can they expect the PN to even think of forming a coalition government with a party that is constantly at loggerheads with them?

A coalition government is a fantasy that AD are living with, while Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi has himself ruled out that there is even a remote possibility that this will happen.

And now we have it from the horse’s mouth. Swieqi AD councillor Rene Rossignaud last Wednesday resigned from his position as both councillor and AD member because he said he is no longer in agreement with the party policies.

He accused AD of being a party that wants some form of power at all costs, and by this he meant a place in the House of Representatives. This has exposed all of AD’s nice talk of being a party that is different from the PN and the MLP. AD will no longer be believed when it says that it wants to offer a fresh breath into Maltese politics.

But Mr Rossignaud went further than that. He accused AD of becoming “an instrument to attack Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi and the Nationalist Party, without understanding the consequences that such a strategy will bring to this country”.

What he said was that a vote for AD will be a vote for the Malta Labour Party. And he explains this further when he said, in his letter to AD chairman Harry Vassallo, that he is “not prepared to work in a party and be responsible for the election of another party that wants to separate Malta from the Europe AD believes in so much”.

In other words, AD are sacrificing their own beliefs – in the EU – by trying to take people from the Nationalist Party, risking that what AD has worked for – Malta’s EU membership – will be thrown out of the window.

There you have it.

AD’s credibility of trying to be an alternative to the two major parties and offering something new has been shot down with the stroke of a pen. The Greens’ reply to all this has been rather weak too, as all they could come up with was another accusation levelled at the Nationalist Party, saying that the PN wants to frighten the people not to vote AD.

But, at the end of the day, AD must realise that things have changed for them after last Wednesday. Before Mr Rossignaud’s letter, all that was said about their clear intentions to try to discredit the PN and the Prime Minister were all a matter of interpretation.

Now, their “secret” has been revealed.