The people of Malta and Gozo turned out to vote in their usual great numbers yesterday in the tenth general election since Independence, despite the cold weather that at times threatened rain, and despite the many delays voters had to put up with.
The slow start to the voting (which was reflected in a slightly lower turnout percentage at 2pm) led to queues of voters later on in the day and some places reported long waiting times as afternoon became evening.
This led the Electoral Commission to decide, at around 8pm, to extend voting time till 11pm.
Everything took place in great order with no incidents reported despite the excitement and tension that an election brings with it.
The delays were mainly caused by polling booths having to be closed when elderly and infirm voters needed help to vote and were given time and assistance to do so.
People voting in local councils elections in one third of Malta could also have caused delays. Voting two separate ballot papers turned out to be far more laborious than expected.
In fact, while the turnout at 2pm was some five per cent less than in 2003, comparing the turnout yesterday with the EU referendum in 2003, when local council elections were also held on the same day, is just some two or three per cent under this year.
A welcome innovation this year was the introduction of a white curtain closing off the space for the individual to put his mark on the ballot paper. This ensured far more privacy than in other elections, which forced individual voters to resort to many stratagems to disguise which part of the ballot paper they were filling, and hence which party they were voting for from the prying eyes behind them.
The country’s top personalities voted as had already been announced.
First to vote was Archbishop Paul Cremona who voted at around 8am in Sliema where he used to reside. President Eddie Fenech Adami, accompanied by his wife Mary and son Michael, voted at the Birkirkara primary school soon after.
The second party head to vote was Lawrence Gonzi who, accompanied by his wife Kate, voted at the Marsascala primary school at around 10am. Azzjoni Nazzjonali head Josie Muscat who also hails from Marsascala had voted in the same locality earlier.
Alternattiva Demokratika leader Harry Vassallo, accompanied by his wife Sue, voted in Sliema.
Labour leader Alfred Sant was the last party leader to vote. He arrived at a polling booth in Birkirkara at around 2pm.
All party leaders and candidates spent the day touring the various localities to encourage voters.
When voting was over, the laborious process of reconciliation of votes cast began, even before the sealed boxes with the votes cast were taken in strict security to the counting hall in Naxxar.
Once they arrived there, more laborious processes of reconciliation awaited them before the actual counting started. A rather hopeful estimate says that the actual counting of votes will not begin before 11am this morning.
The parties would have been keeping their own exit polls but they were all keeping any information they had under their hats. The best pre-ballot estimates were that this year’s ballot would be very, very close and any slight mistake regarding exit polls could send the wrong message and get people out on the streets celebrating when there would be no real reason for them to do so.
The election and the blogs
This was the first election to be dominated by blogs. This had been apparent all through the election campaign but it became totally clear on Friday, supposedly the “day of quiet and reflection”.
What happened on Friday repeats, in a vastly different dimension, what used to take place in other times on Easter Saturday when Xandir Malta, previously known as Rediffusion, used to stop broadcasting out of respect for the day. This used to infuriate those who wanted to listen to music until everyone started providing his own music and the tradition was broken.
The “day of quiet and reflection” is a rather recent innovation in Malta’s election campaign. Until 1976, in fact, campaigning went on till voting day but quite maturely the political parties decided too much hype and tension was being generated right up to the last minute and the ‘day’ was introduced.
So far, it has been kept religiously. Except this time.
On Friday most websites with political comment were sanitized. The Times even removed from its website not only the political reporting of the previous days but also comments on them and even at least two political blogs. Later on during the day, however, some kind of rethink seems to have taken place and the two blogs were pasted back.
As for blogs proper, some, like Malta9Thermidor stopped blogging out of respect for the day of reflection while others, like J’Accuse continued blogging with relatively few comments pasted back.
The whole issue revolved around Daphne Caruana Galizia’s new website and blog (www.daphnecaruanagalizia.com), which on Friday kept up a non-stop dialogue of sorts with those who sent in their comments.
This scandalised many people, but all the same, according to Daphne herself, she had no less than 31,000 “unique visitors” in one day, a huge improvement on the 900 who accessed the site on Sunday, the day after the website was launched.
Then, at 1pm yesterday, the blog was blocked. Writing later, at around 3pm, Daphne claimed, “At 13:15hrs today, somebody hacked into our server and blocked this site. Anybody trying to log on got the message: Error – access denied. That’s the thing with the Internet, you see – they can’t burn the building down, so they have to find some other way.
“It took us about one-and-a-half hours to get it back on line again, after receiving kind assistance in shifting it to a different server. Meanwhile, lots of you called and e-mailed to see what had gone wrong. What went wrong is this: there are too many people about who don’t understand free speech.”
She added: “This website, an idea conceived in a split second last Saturday and put into effect in a couple of hours that same night, has been a run-away hit. It is a rallying-point for those who are tired of the po-faced ‘I’m so balanced that if I criticise Labour then I must also criticise the Nationalists’ coverage elsewhere. Lots of people don’t think that way. They have eyes in their head and can see Labour for what it is: the party that hasn’t won a single general election since 1976 – 32 years – except for Alfred Sant’s brief aberration. The Labour Party scores one fiasco after another because it is wholly incompetent and cut off from the way things are done. No wonder they’re gearing up to go mad if they win today, and are already behaving like Madame Defarge and her cronies beneath the guillotine.”
Daphne was not the only one doing politics on Election Day. A mirror blogspot had been created over the past days (defnicient.blogspot.com) and its posts were mainly scurrilous attacks on Daphne.
One other development in this election campaign was the widespread use of videos posted on YouTube. A quick search on YouTube shows no less than 119 videos that deal with the election campaign, with probably more under different names.
The viewership of these videos is incredible: 23,000 viewed the Norman Lowell video, almost 2,000 watched the video of Dom Mintoff at the Election Commission building, 8,500 watched the Jeffrey Pullicino-Orlando – Alfred Sant confrontation, 19,000 watched ‘hamalli’ shouting their praise of Lawrence Gonzi and no less than 26,000 watched the deeply scurrilous video on One News journalists’ private lives.
The debate
Those who could not be bothered to go to the main parties’ last mass meetings, at Floriana and Luxol respectively, stayed at home to watch the only debate in the campaign between the leaders.
Those who for some reason were out, could watch it later on di-ve.com or even on Daphne’s website.
Mostly, people drew their own conclusions from the debate, but it would seem, at least to some observers, that Lawrence Gonzi allowed Alfred Sant to dictate the themes of the debate and only put across his party’s proposals sporadically.
This allowed Dr Sant to harp on his party’s corruption theme, with no cogent reply from Dr Gonzi, and to continue to portray the government as inefficient and incapable.
On the other hand, Dr Gonzi did not even mention Dr Sant’s halving the surcharge proposal and he came across as patronizing when he turned to the viewers to tell them “they” had given “them” a new hospital.