Now that the Christmas and New Year festivities are over, the country will slowly gear up to what should be one of the highlights of the political year – the election for Malta’s representatives in the European Parliament, which will be held in June.

This will be the second time that Malta will exercise its right of electing its own people to represent it in one of the highest European institutions. In 2004, just weeks after Malta became a member of the European Union, the Maltese had gone to the polls to elect their five representatives.

That time, it was the Labour Party who had emerged victorious, winning three of the five available seats against the Nationalists’ two. At face value, this outcome was quite strange considering that the PN had been the party that had fought for Malta’s EU membership, while Labour had been adamantly against.

Yet, the circumstances in which that election was held, including the economic difficulties that were being faced at the time, pushed many people into voting differently from how they normally vote in general elections. This resulted in a 3-2 Labour win, while Alternattiva Demokratika, which fares badly in general elections, went close to electing its candidate.

This pattern was followed in the subsequent local council elections, with Labour winning each time and AD obtaining better results than those in national polls, while the PN suffered defeat after defeat. There was a reversal of fortunes in the 2008 general election, with the Nationalist Party being returned to power for the third consecutive time, albeit with the smallest margin of victory.

What will happen in June is anyone’s guess. In 2004, there was an overwhelming protest vote against the government, and this could happen again this year. It is normal that governments are quite unpopular in the first half of their term in office, as it is usually during this time that the most difficult decisions are taken. In this regard, the new water and electricity rates will probably play their own part in pushing some people to vote against the party they voted for last year, or else not vote at all.

Other things need to be taken into consideration. First of all, the main political parties are still to announce the list of candidates that they will be submitting to contest the election. People might be tempted to vote for a particular candidate, even though he or she does not represent the party they normally support, simply because they believe that he or she is best suited for the job.

In this case, people will be gauging the work that was carried out by the MEPs who were elected last time round, and judge them accordingly. The Labour Party has lost its star candidate, Joseph Muscat, who has since resigned the post after he was elected as party leader last June.

Simon Busuttil, David Casa, Louis Grech and John Attard Montalto have been representing Malta since June 2004, while Glen Bedingfield replaced Dr Muscat in September. There are others who seek to take their place when the elections are held in June, but these candidates have the advantage of having already worked on Malta’s behalf.

While individual candidates will be doing their best to convince the electorate that they are the best choice, what will be interesting is the overall outcome. Will the PN make up for their 2004 defeat or will Labour win again? Will AD, or any other organisation, manage to break the duopoly?

What is sure is that, when the results of the EP election are analysed, they should be taken for what they are. They should never be compared to a general election result. The experience we had in the past years have made it clear that there is a vast difference between the way people think in a general election and the way they do when local or EP elections are held.