The election campaign happily comes to an end in just four days. It has been a short, crisp campaign that offered a remarkable contrast in the way the two major parties confronted the electorate. The certainly more effective Labour campaign can best be described in one big-sounding but highly appropriate word: impeccable. More so if you consider it in the light of the blitzkrieg it has had to traditionally endure from the English-language print media and self-centred individuals on national television who, while eternally searching for everybody, were in fact all busily running the incumbent’s campaign – for good lolly.

While Labour has chosen to face the electorate in a sane, down-to-earth manner and with a vision that is based strictly on the realistic experience of total consultation with all the parties involved up and down the social scale of Maltese society, the governing Nationalists preferred to go into presidential mode.

Far too many times in this campaign the Nationalists seemed awkwardly embarrassed at having to display their team of weather-beaten ministers, give or take the odd exception who still enjoys the trust of most bona fide observers of the process of Maltese government. It was like Manchester United or Milan opting to take on other Champions League contenders minus their big guns. When it became obvious that the strong Labour team showing was having a huge impact compared to the one-trick pony, going by the name of gonzipn, the Nationalists suddenly began to let us have a protective peep here and there of the outgoing ministers.

Now you see me, now you don’t. This Scarlet Pimpernel attitude cannot have gone down well with the neutrals on the scene. The ministers we are talking about have been the protagonists on the local political stage for donkey’s years and therefore should have been at the forefront in the word battle against the precise sniping from Opposition marksmen. Rather than hidden away from the electorate, the ministers should have been telling us all about their successes, their plans for the future and their new visions for 21st century Malta.

Instead, they ran away scared from the TV cameras, playing hide-and-seek with the eager voters and hiding behind the smiling image of their lord protector who, let it be said, has gone on record saying that, if re-elected, they were not guaranteed a Cabinet post. No vote of confidence, that. So why didn’t he just have them removed when he had all the time in the world to do, so and all the power needed to replace them? In Shakespearean language, all this was a comedy of errors spiced up by the shooting of one’s own foot at university, several condescending television programmes and other clumsily pumped-up electoral events.

Labour, on the other hand, knew from the word go that the campaign was bound to be a tough, relentless one during which no punches would be pulled and no prisoners taken. It could easily have fallen into the temptation of unwisely trying to garner some sympathy in the aftermath of its leader’s physical ailments at the end of last year. That it chose not to do so was a correct decision, which, in any case, would have been considered going horrifically against his own nature by Dr Alfred Sant himself.

Labour’s smooth campaign can be attributed to the party’s re-found energy derived from a series of impressive election victories at both local and national levels as well as from the general perception in the country that it is indeed time for change, to re-charge national batteries, to try new methods and to retrieve the nation’s sanity from the abyss of sheer corruption and disruption where it was lost in recent years.

The other two relevant parties on the hustings, however small, deserve a mention for their tenacity and enthusiasm. Right wing or left wing, they have both given a good voice to their campaigns. They have been seeking the people’s trust in their own special way with their own special views of the issues at stake in this country of ours. No doubt, there will be isolated chunks of the electorate that will want to rest their anger and the disgruntlement on their sprawling wings.

But back to the big guns. It should be said however that there are decent people in both parties; people who work hard and are genuine in their thoughts and aspirations. You normally do not have to say such things in a different society. All of this is rightly taken for granted in places where politics do not interfere so loudly and, sometimes, so viciously in people’s lives.

Sadly, we live in an environment that obstinately prefers to point out the warts when there are real treasures waiting to be seen and appreciated.

One will have hoped that this election campaign would have been the ideal opportunity for all of us to show we have matured as a nation by preferring to stick to substance rather than to mere one-man showmanship and regurgitated projects some of which, incredibly, go back more than 20 years.

We meet again when it’s all over.

Thank goodness for that. It will hopefully and finally be time for re-awakening.