As the electoral campaign draws closer to an end, Opposition Leader Alfred Sant is indeed going strong, despite his recent illness and his reluctance to fit into a slightly different lifestyle as a result of that. Shadowing Dr Sant for a day, Francesca Vella got a sneak peek of what his day is typically like at the height of the campaign.

Books are, without any doubt, one of Dr Sant’s passions in life – his 7,000-strong collection certainly bears evidence to this – and he expressed disappointment at not having much time to catch up on his reading during the electoral campaign.

This is unsurprising, to say the least, considering that the whole five weeks of the campaign are jam-packed with private meetings, press briefings, TV and radio programmes and political events of every form.

Although he is normally up by 7am, Dr Sant admitted that it takes him time to wake up properly and he spends the first couple of hours working from home during the campaign.

He told me he does not normally take any breakfast, but now has no choice. He fell ill towards the end of December and underwent surgery immediately.

As a result, he has had to change his eating habits and had to start taking three good meals a day, particularly due to the chemotherapy pills he has to take.

“I didn’t use to take breakfast and used to have one good meal at whatever time I used to get home in the evening,” he explained. So he now takes his toast and coffee, while catching up on the latest news first thing in the morning.

Upon his arrival at the Labour Party’s headquarters at about 10.30am, Dr Sant told me that he would first hold a meeting with some Labour MPs regarding the topic of the press briefing, which this week happened to be the economy.

Following his speech at the briefing, broadcast live on the party’s television station, Dr Sant replied to journalists’ questions and after that rushed back to his office to get ready for a private meeting.

With hardly any time to spare, he spoke to me briefly in his office before he asked whether I would join him in his car to set off for a recording of Bondi+, during which he was first quizzed by presenter Lou Bondi and then joined by candidates from the three other parties for a political discussion.

It is a well-known fact that Dr Sant prefers driving his own car and even refused to be driven around when he became prime minister in 1996. This time was no exception and I caught up with his fast walking pace as soon as he was ready to leave the party headquarters.

As I was whisked into the passenger seat of his car, I told him it must be difficult to be punctual during an electoral campaign, even though his timing is normally on the dot.

It is usually a matter of plus or minus half an hour at the moment, he explained, adding, “you go on from one thing to the next without stopping, but you have no control over certain things that take longer than expected”.

We get to the Where’s Everybody? studios in Qormi and a make-up artist gestured to Dr Sant to get some make-up applied before the Bondi+ shoot began.

In the studio, he gave his shoes a quick shine and party secretary general Jason Micallef approached him to make sure his tie was in place. All set… and… three, two, one – action!

The recording took slightly longer than expected and by the end of it Dr Sant gasped at his watch. “Gosh, I didn’t realise it got so late,” he said, as we got back into his car to go back to the party headquarters in Hamrun.

It was about 3pm and we came across quite a lot of traffic as we approached the headquarters; a number of people waved as they caught a glimpse of Dr Sant in the driver’s seat and he waved back, smiling, “There must have been a good number of Labourites in the area we just drove past”.

I smiled back, saying that people’s reaction when they see him must give away a lot about their political views.

Back at the Centru Nazzjonali Laburista (the Labour Party headquarters), he dashed back to his office to check something out, telling me he hoped he would have some time for a quick rest at home before having to set off on the MLP tour bus for the events scheduled for that evening.

I met him again on the so-called “coach tal-bidla” (the coach of change), which left the headquarters at about 6pm.

I took my seat next to Dr Sant on the coach and I could immediately tell that he was in better spirits than he had been earlier during the day.

“My daughter, Marta, came home this afternoon,” he told me, when I asked him whether he managed to get some rest. “I got caught up checking my emails. I had to delete older emails to make space in my inbox,” he said, with a slightly irritated look.

“Computers tend to slow down so much and I don’t like deleting files I might need to refer to later on.”

He told me he makes it a point to meet his daughter every day. “I used to pick her up from school and she used to spend the afternoon with me when she was young, and we’ve managed to keep that up,” he said.

I comment on the fact that he probably couldn’t do without some rest in the afternoon during a campaign, but he said that during previous campaigns he would go on without any rest.

“Things are different now due to my illness,” he said, but it is evident that he is coping well and his recovery has been excellent.

Unsurprisingly, he said he does not find time to do anything that is not work-related during the electoral campaign. He admits that one of his biggest regrets is that he has no time to catch up on his reading.

He speaks passionately about his books and tells me that he loves shopping from second-hand bookshops.

“You always tend to find something different in such shops, and books that are difficult to come across. I once managed to find a book that is so rare that a friend of mine thought I had stolen it from the library,” he laughs.

The conversation gets interrupted as we stop at each locality for Dr Sant to give a speech to cheering supporters, but back on the coach, the discussion goes on to food and Dr Sant told me that he managed to get used to preparing meals, even though he has had to change his eating habits.

“I normally prepare easy meals like ready-made pies,” he said, going on to say that he usually does a considerable shopping trip once every two weeks.

“That’s been a bit difficult lately though, since I still cannot carry heavy loads due to the operation,” he said.

Asked whether he finds TV relaxing, Dr Sant told me he has no television connection at home, but he does sometimes watch some film or other when he’s at his ex-wife and daughter’s house.

He explained, however, that he uses the internet to stream TV programmes he might need to watch that would happen to be available online.

There’s hardly any time to watch TV, anyway, during an electoral campaign. Dr Sant still writes two weekly columns for local newspapers and those practically take up about two whole evenings.

Before I bid him farewell in Mosta, the last stop on the tour bus that evening, at about eight, Dr Sant tells me his day is not over yet.

“Something came up today, but I normally carry on working for another couple of hours,” he explained, saying that he normally ends up dozing off when he’s doing some work at home, before getting to bed at about midnight, looking forward to the next day, getting closer to the big day and hoping that it will bear the desired fruit of his and the Labour Party’s tireless effort