Saturday’s European Parliament vote is a test case of Malta’s European credentials. Going by what is the norm in so many of the other 26 member states, we would be in the norm if voter turnout slips below 50%, but that’s hardly feasible here, of course.

It is, or rather should be, a test case of our European credentials if we were to prove we look at things from a European, that is, a continental, perspective. Going by what we see around us, that seems hardly the case.

For some, it would seem that the EP elections, just like last time, are a sort of re-run, or reality check, on Malta’s EU accession. Prime Minister Gonzi states that Malta’s past five years inside the EU have been a success story. That takes some believing: let’s start from the mundane: what is European about our roads? Or about our salaries? Or about the cost of practically everything? We thought that with EU membership we were going to get rights that we previously did not have, but we find that even to reverse a tax wrongly imposed on the people, such as the departure tax or the VAT on car registration tax, months have to pass and we may even have to sue the government to get it.

In short, going by this analysis, membership of the EU has so far not brought about the instant change and improvement in the national quality of life.

On the other hand, yes, we can now travel freely to other countries of the EU and we can even go and study or work there. We have the euro, which despite its internal problems, is a strong currency and helped us in no little way to survive the world recession.

More importantly, most of the people in Malta, except for the diehard Labourites who still believe Partnership would have been better, and that national independence was jeopardised, feel they belong to the EU and are nicely settling in. The fact that so many candidates are fighting like cats in an alley to go and represent Malta in the five or six member seats in Brussels and Strasbourg is itself an indication how much we have settled in the European institutions.

So Saturday’s vote should more properly be a celebration of a national consensus that has been arrived at.

Instead, we once again find ourselves as if on the eve of general elections, where every little vote counts, where people on their deathbed are taken to vote. This is not European at all, it is Romanian at its worst under Ceausescu, Italy in 1948, Ok... Florida in 2000. There is no sense of perspective, no sense of irony and humour, no sense of real democracy.

One would have thought that a government that was reconfirmed by the skin of its teeth would be content with governing the country for a further four years instead of trying to win even the (unimportant at the end) European elections.

One would have thought that a Labour Opposition under a new leader would have preferred to go long-term and aim for the next real thing, the coming 2013 elections, rather than go pell-mell for a victory in the (unimportant) EP elections.

The election of new members of the European Parliament is just that: an election of five (possibly six) true and valid persons who will represent us the electorate in a Parliament of over 700 members.

Of course, any election, even an election for a local council, let alone an election which involves the whole electorate, carries an echo on the national scene: it is a test of what the people feel about the government of the country. This is what happens in Malta but it is also what happens elsewhere, particularly in places like Italy or Britain for particular reasons. But we must not mistake the echo for the real thing.

The main duty of the electorate on Saturday is to choose five (or six) valid persons, who know what the EU is all about, who can represent us with dignity and with the least of mistakes, who can contribute to building up the European dream for the years to come. All the rest that is being said, that they will be there to report the government, to protect our interests, etc is all balderdash.

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One notices that the PL’s campaign was somewhat strange, in that at almost all events it was Joseph Muscat who spoke. The PL media focuses so much on Dr Muscat that at times no other news is allowed to interfere in the news bulletins. It was only, or almost, when the non-party media got into it, that the individual PL candidates were given some space.

On the other hand, PN came up with the novelty of a jigsaw puzzle list of candidates that it is only when you fit them together that you can see the whole picture. As seen from the billboards out up in the past hours, each represents a different segment of the electorate. If there is any incoherence between what they stand for, that is not explored, nor with what is the present government practice.

The final outcome is exercising minds, and probably bets. If the final result is 4-1 in favour of PL, that would represent a signal PL victory, but to get that, PL ads told us, you need a 60+%, which would seem to be hardly the case. On the other hand, to get a 3-2 result would seem to signal status quo, hardly worth the trouble PL went for. More interestingly will be the percentage of votes for PL, especially if it goes beyond the majority of voters or the amount of votes obtained last year.

There is no doubt that people are angry and disappointed with the government, and it’s not because of PL media spin or Joseph Muscat’s diatribes, but rather because people are genuinely angry about the ham-fisted way in which the electricity surcharge was put up, angry at a government that seems to delight in treading upon toes, and angry and frustrated about issues such as illegal immigration and inflation about which (and this is not just a perception) government has done practically nothing. The times of crisis, something rarely mentioned by PL, brings out anxieties in people and a government who till lately kept insisting all was hunky-dory is asking people to kick it. As no doubt it will. Even if the main policy lines of the government are in the right direction, from closing up the dockyard to battling hard to keep the deficit from rising even further.