Election campaigns have always brought out the worst in our country and the present one, now drawing to its conclusion this week, is no exception.

Granted, so far there has not been the usual accompaniment of physical violence though one must reserve judgement until the blast of euphoria once victory is announced, is over.

But physical violence is only one of the many possible manifestations of violence. We have had verbal violence now climaxing with the leaders of the two biggest parties, one a past prime minister and the other the incumbent, calling each other a liar. We have seen libel cases flying about like so many leaves in autumn. We have seen billboards and adverts in the papers that focus negatively on the other side rather than propose what they want for the future of the country.

We have also seen how the clash of party interests, in their paroxystic search for new votes, have seen them reducing policy issues to black or white and using them to swat the other side rather than educate the electorate.

Two cases in point: the financing of health, and oil prices.

Public health: We have been all brought up on the assumption that healthcare is free. The idea began when we were all so much poorer, and doctors did not receive a huge salary. And also when healthcare was pretty rudimentary.

Since then we have grown richer, doctors’ salaries have grown exponentially and healthcare has grown both in extension and also in hi-tech solutions. Our national bill for health, especially now that we have built ourselves a state-of-the-art new hospital, has grown and grown, but we still do not expect to pay anything for our healthcare. In all the other areas of life we have grown accustomed to pay more to get a better service.

The time when, like in most other countries, Malta too will have to face up to this situation by at least introducing some sort of payment for some services, is fast drawing near. In 1997 the Labour government courageously tackled the issue by imposing a 50c charge on prescriptions, which drew full condemnation from the PN opposition.

Since then, no PN government has had the courage to do anything about this situation except to continue footing the bill. But this did not mean that officials in the government service did not continue to come up with solutions to the financial sustainability of healthcare.

Come the 2008 election campaign, the Labour leadership, in tones of high scandal, revealed a memo to a Cabinet committee that suggested doing what the Labour administration had tried to do in 1996-1998.

Fair point to make and Lawrence Gonzi was too precipitate to rule out any charge for healthcare in any PN government he led.

The two sides should have, more profitably, united to teach the people that healthcare, as it is practiced today, costs far too much to come out of government revenue. That would have helped the country move forward.

Instead of which we have all this false scandal mongering; this precipitate ruling out any charges for healthcare. Conclusion: one government coffer with less revenue. One people left in ignorance. Two parties bashing each other over something they should have united in proposing. But no, this is election time when things have to be in white or black.

Oil prices: It is obvious that, with oil costing over $100 a barrel, anybody using oil or oil derivative is facing a steep rise in costs, and that any household is struggling against a much higher charge for almost everything. This is, of course, worse in countries that have a colder climate, far longer distances, and higher electricity and fuel prices.

Here in Malta, however, people thought that the surcharge on electricity and water rates is an option and that it could be removed, halved, or turned any way. In comes Labour with its proposal to halve the surcharge and give back as tax credits half the surcharge paid by small businesses.

The government battled against this proposal but failed to see how households and businesses were being impacted by the high oil prices. Hence it failed to come up with alternative solutions, some of which were staring it in the face. It failed, after all these years, to tackle the many inefficiencies at Enemalta and the key policy issue of liberalising fuel supplies has been left for another government to tackle.

Conclusion: Instead of the two parties facing this issue rationally and in the national interest, we have this Punch & Judy show with one party proposing a potentially ruinous halving of the surcharge and the other party not committing itself to drastically cut inefficiency at Enemalta.

Education: We also had that battle regarding education. It is clear that, although much has been done, there is still far more to be done in education as far too many of our children are leaving school with limited reading ability, and our school system still destines such children to the dustbin of society.

Labour suggested adding an extra year between kindergarten and primary school. And all hell broke loose. PN astutely used the ploy to stir up mothers of small children and scare them that their children will be spending another year at school.

Proposals for changes in school years should have never become an election issue as it risked, as indeed it did, becoming distorted.

True, there is need to reform schooling and true, all the new shiny schools and the new system of colleges will hardly improve schooling. Presumably, even with this additional year thrown in, we will still have a high percentage of school leavers with limited schooling.

Conclusion: Instead of coming together to identify what is going wrong in our education and to tackle such issues with objectivity, we clash on solutions, which at best are peripheral, instead of tackling a whole gamut of issues cogently and with a plan. And our people will be none the wiser as to which solution will work, which solutions are needed, and whether our schooling is improving or getting worse.

The two main parties are engaged in a desperate search for the last vote, as they all perceive that this election is too close to call. This makes them try to hog the centre of the country and also forces them to eliminate those issues that could see them lose votes, even if these issues may genuinely interest many voters. Issues such as divorce or hunting.

It thus follows that in this election, certain vital issues, like the ones we have mentioned, and others, are continually swept off the board. Which in turn leads the voter to ask when will such issues be tackled and how will his/her vote on Saturday tell the rest of the country what is really at his/her heart. Or whether elections are a choice between two evils.

This brings us to the heart of the matter: in an election the voter is asked to use his vote to determine the future of the country, but then you find this is not so at all. The main purpose of an election appears to give the winner everything and to take everything from the loser. With nothing in between.

Hence the dualism that has been allowed to creep into national politics, which then seeps down to all levels, even to the level of a local council, an office, a place of work, a family.

Hence the tribalism that seems to take over at election times, with masses of red or blue flags, huge massive mass meetings. And hence too the idea that the two main parties somehow alternate in power with roughly 10 years or two terms each way. We don’t really need to hold elections: all we need to do is look up the calendar and see which year it is. If it’s this year, it’s my turn, if it’s that year, it’s yours.

And yet, somehow, there is a beauty, a justice, in this. It’s good to have parties coming to power and then losing it. It’s good to have parties spend some years in Opposition, though not for too long. It’s good that no party starts to believe it is the natural party of government and the other is the natural party of Opposition.

Nor does it look right that a party, any party, gets to stay in power by default, because the other party is led by X, then because it is led by Y, and so on. A party should be returned on the basis of what it did when in power and what it proposes to do.

There is also such a thing as voter fatigue. In this day and age of television, and with the two main parties owning their own television stations, voters get to see the same faces over and over again to the point of nausea. Even if presumably this voter fatigue hurts the party in government, it will soon switch to the other party if that is successful at the polls, and with a vengeance.

Nor should a party lead its followers to believe that this time it’s their turn, it must be their turn.

All these are issues that have somehow come to carry weight in this most unusual of elections (or perhaps the election is a usual election, but we have been having so many unusual elections we find ourselves at a loss how to describe it). This time, at least in the words and hope of the members and supporters of the two smaller parties, all the traditional scenario of Maltese politics is about to change due to the important and crucial number of votes they will get. To see it from a different perspective, that of the main parties, these small parties aim to get a stranglehold on national life if they are elected and form a coalition, which is far beyond their real strength. They would then hold the rest of the country at gunpoint.

But as seen from their respective points of view, it is only by voting for them that a voter can ensure that his vote matters.

The pages of this Sunday paper have resonated with articles for and against such a perspective, more for than against, more from AD than from Azzjoni Nazzjonali, but that is free speech for you and such are the type of people who read and write to papers, not just our own.

The results next week will see how many were or were not scared from their original intention by the type of scaremongering that succeeded in 2003 but not in the European Parliament elections in 2004.

In these last days of the campaign, the main issues have come to the fore. Principal among these issues is Mepa and its handling of development applications.

Last week’s publication of Mepa’s Audit Officer’s condemnation of the Development Control Commission, which overturned a Reject advice to permit the issuing of a development permit for a supermarket in Outside Development Zone in Safi, submitted by a well-known developer, and with the consequent en bloc resignation of the whole DCC, can be seen as one defining point of this campaign, one that PN has reacted to inadequately, it must be said.

Here, in one simple issue that anyone can understand, are issues central to this campaign.

First of all, the whole issue of development, or rather over-development. Then the issue of Mepa, whose sorry state has been admitted by none other than Lawrence Gonzi, if for no other reason than by the fact that he has committed himself to take Mepa in his own hands, if returned to Castille. As well as the widespread perception that Mepa decisions can be overturned, and the equally widespread suspicion that it all depends on whom you know, as usual.

Hence on to the subject of corruption, which inevitably crops up at each and every election. It is a subject close to Alfred Sant’s heart when in Opposition, true, but there are enough historical precedents for this to show how widespread and pervasive are suspicions of corruption embedded in our people.

The subject of corruption is two-edged. On the one hand few of us can admit to not harbouring suspicions of corruption in others when it comes to anything obtained from a government office, which has the right to accept and reject a plea, an application, and so on. The moment things are not free and available, makes he who has to take decisions subject to immense pressures and equally to widespread perceptions of corruption. Rightly or wrongly. Alfred Sant spent from 1994 to 1996 raising claims of corruption at 360 degrees but then, when in office, could not find just one proof of corruption.

On the other hand, rare are those people who have never been tempted to cut corners or try to get something for themselves. In fact, what does anyone think are all these people wanting urgent, immediate meetings with ministers and the Prime Minister doing? In many, many cases they are asking for a permission that did not come through normal channels. And in many, many cases they are threatening them with their no-vote and that of their extended family.

So corruption is part of the national DNA. We are a Mediterranean people. And our ethical standards are unfortunately not those what are reputed to be in northern European countries. That does not mean that corruption should be condoned or allowed. We are not talking here of ministers being corrupt, though that can and does happen. But also the corruption that lurks below the ministerial level, in many cases down to caretaker levels.

It is all very well to proclaim Zero Tolerance to corruption, and so it should be, but to do that with some effectiveness would require nerves of steel that politicians, when it comes to retaining power, simply never seem to have. They thus end up protecting and covering up not just for the inefficient but also for the corrupt.

To just refer any allegations of corruption to the police for investigation does not really solve the problem and can actually be very convenient and handy. Today, we can see how creating all these authorities supposedly to end ministerial interference and corruption has not worked in cutting down corruption. On the contrary, the web of corruption has spread to so many levels that today it is seen as pervasive and something everybody does, something that only draconian measures last used in Stalinist times, can eliminate. Yet there are surely many ways in which inherent and incessant corruption can be tackled and offenders brought to book; police investigations, regardless of their goodwill, will never do the trick.

Still, to make just one comment, while the PN has itself created the now much-maligned Audit Office within Mepa, and has made Mepa more and more transparent, it is Alternattiva which has come up with more suggestions to tackle and eliminate corruption, while Labour, which hollers Corruption with every breath, has not come up with a credible template to actually tackle corruption beyond claiming it is incorruptible.

Construction and planning permits have clearly emerged as one main theme of the election, not just with regard to the corruption issue but also with regard to the quality of life promised to the people at each and every election.

There is a time span between the approval of a development permit and its actual erection and completion, so many of the big projects approved in recent months have still to change our skylines. Even so, however, there is national concern about the extent to which development has been allowed, the way development has become the national pastime and the consequent reduction in the quality of life of those who have been affected. On the other hand, development has opened the way to greed and more greed and this has affected the way we relate to each other.

Development has also become one rather sure way how people maximize their income and holdings, and it has actually become a very important component of the national economy, along with such restricted areas as financial services and online gambling.

The rest of the economy is still in the doldrums and the much acclaimed four per cent growth rate has not percolated down to the levels at which most Maltese live. On the contrary, most feel very keenly the inroads that increasing inflation is making into their available income.

Of the two parties, Labour’s plans for the economy are rather vague and not underpinned by internal consistency. How can you aim at a growth of between four and six per cent on the strength of upgrading projects, commitments involving outlays that cannot be even rough-estimated, more money for people to spend, and a whole backlog of so many commitments that will surely impinge on government spending? But, to give it credit, it has been Labour, which has been consistently near the concerns of the people most affected by the higher cost of living, while PN tended to pooh-pooh it or even deny it.

PN, on the other hand, has a very credible track record; it managed to get us into euroland, and its commitments to further cuts in income tax make sense to those who pay income tax. It has however neglected to commit itself to further cuts in government spending; the European Commission itself has commented that its fiscal previsions bordered on the optimistic and based on too many one-offs.

Here it is then. With just a few ticks on paper come Saturday, we are all expected to make sense of all the issues and to make our choice. Considering the complexity facing us it is no wonder most go for the most basic of choices and why we, time and again, turn tribalistic at election time.

Unfortunately, this is no a la carte menu we are offered but a choice of four set menus. On the morrow of the election the winner will take all, there will be days of crazy celebration but later the realisation will set in that governing Malta is like plucking a bunch of thistles. The sting comes later. The most unfortunate aspect of the Maltese political situation is that when people perceive you cannot give out more handouts they leave you just as if you are a carrier of the Black Plague.

We look on elections as a Win Win situation but in reality and taken in a long view they are actually a No Win situation.

There go our people voting, each person’s vote counting just as much as the person in front and at the back. With all our internal contradictions and small mindedness, together with a vision or two. Five years to the day when we, or rather the majority of us, took a leap of faith in something that we had no experience of and that all our national history militated against, today we can look back and say that this decision was the right one, even if we have not all come to benefit or to realise the goodness of the choice the majority made in the name of the whole country.

Visions, also on the national level, do exist but visions are precisely something that are unfortunately absent this time round.