For those many people who stayed indoors, their eyes glued to the television screen, last Sunday, things that happened in the counting hall revealed more than perhaps the people who were actually in there noticed.

Most of the time, the television stations’ fixed cameras were focused on the corridors around the Perspex enclosure where votes were being counted.

What struck many people was the sight of Alternattiva candidate, and one of the prime figures in the election campaign, former PN chairman Carmel Cacopardo.

Mr Cacopardo could be seen from time to time strutting down the middle of the corridor, his

jacket open, his rather large stomach protruding, his bushy eyebrows twitching from side to side, sometimes his fingers on his upper lips. While the rest of the people around him talked incessantly to each other, or on their mobiles, keeping their hands over their mouths so they could not be lip-read, Mr Cacopardo seemed to enjoy his own company.

Somehow, he reminded viewers of a Roman

emperor.

Then he too disappeared. He received all of 242 votes on the third district (which includes Marsascala) and 315 on the eleventh district.