Unless the 15,860 uncollected votes for yesterday’s European Parliament elections, a 50 per cent increase over the 2004 election, mean something else, all is set for today’s results. And if the polls were right, and there was no surge or ebb in the ballot boxes yesterday, it will be a Labour victory.
The most common basic prognosis made by informed sources sees PL obtaining 55 or 57 per cent, and PN 37 per cent. That would give PN two to PL’s three MEPs.
Same as last time, many would say, the PL tried to warn its people to lower optimistic, or PN-induced prognostications, of four seats to one.
The devil will be in the detail. Will the sixth, still hypothetical, seat go to PL as well, which will thus have four seats and the PN two? Will PL go over not just the 50 per cent mark on a reduced turnout, or will the numbers be more than an absolute majority would get in a general election?
In a few hours, all will be revealed.
Without waiting for the official results, however, many are busily positioning themselves for what comes later – the inevitable backlash, or is it just windows of opportunity opening?
Even if the defeat of the Nationalist Party will be worse than the 2004 one, it will not be a landslide on the UK scale, and there will not be, in Malta, a repeat of the political meltdown there was in Britain on Friday, with ministers dropping like flies and calls for Brown to go reverberating from north to south. The Single Transferable Vote system used in Malta militates against landslides on the First Past the Post system used in Britain.
Even so, the knives will be out inside the governing party. The gap between the executive and the backbench has never been wider. This time, for all the bluster the Prime Minister can muster, it’s the backbenchers that are on the warpath. As they see it, the dismal showing of the party in government is no fault of theirs. The anger at being sidelined, at being removed from Cabinet posts, or not being appointed to one, is still overwhelming, far beyond any loyalty they may feel for the party and its leader. Coupled with anger at the ham-fisted way, as they and not just they see it, in which things have been handled, from choosing George Abela as President to the water and electricity rates saga.
Nevertheless, they have not brought the government down, and they dutifully, if blankly, turn up to vote in the House. But they have been eradicated from the running and, come the next general election, many of them would be hard put to contest again, let alone pull out all the stops to get the party re-elected. Many of those who sweated blood in February 2008 to persuade a reluctant electorate to vote and pardon a party that had trampled all over them, will find it very, very hard to do that again.
Media reports that the Prime Minister threatened a reshuffle if the results are bad cannot be true. What reshuffle, indeed? The ministers have been handpicked for loyalty. Maybe, we will come to this later, they did not all come up to scratch. Maybe they did not go all out to win the EP vote. There was nothing of the frenzy that accompanied the last weeks of the election campaign in 2008. Maybe not campaigning to save your seat undermines your commitment and zeal.
And, if reshuffle it will be, which reluctant backbencher to appoint? There are degrees in the anger spilling out of the bench; some manage to keep their heads down while joining in the anger of the backbench and hoping at the same time for a ministerial promotion. But the Prime Minister well knows that just as not all the able and capable are on the front bench, so too not all those on the backbench are able to handle a ministerial brief. If even the most senior and ‘trusted’ ministers get it wrong, time and again, who will be the bright spark that will get it right and what is he doing on the backbench and nobody had noticed his potential, anyway?
Wider than the parliamentary group there is cool disenchantment. People are simply switched off. And we’re not talking about a normal PN voter here, but people who were intimately connected to the pre-2008 election campaign. Except for those at the very centre, nobody is bothering. Many will even relish seeing the government’s media-hogging personalities bite the dust. The blogs continued with their campaign on the day of silence and reflection but even then, the response to them was muted. It’s almost as if people just have had enough. But enough of the campaign, and enough of the PN government as well.
On the other hand, the government itself has its own post-defeat strategy. Prime Minister Gonzi, in his article on Thursday, practically admitted that today would see a defeat. The tone in which this prediction was made must have been a first in Maltese political history.
There was something else, as well. The Prime Minister, and the core group around him know full well that many more difficult, possibly controversial, decisions await them once the dust of the EP election settles.
The coming days will see the announcement of the Mepa reform. One must ask: why was this reform not announced in the past weeks, when it would have marked a signal electoral commitment being kept?
The public transport reform gets going in earnest with the publication of the call for an expression of interest for the public bus system in the next weeks.
On Saturday 27 June, Renzo Piano will finally unveil his plans for a Parliament to replace Freedom Square and for City Gate. Let the floodgates of controversy – Parliament or Opera House – open again.
Other issues on the boil might include what is happening (very little) at SmartCity where no building is taking place, and where the government is months late on the all-important road link.
Whatever today’s result, the government still seems to be hell-bent on micro-managing, as against getting the big picture. And it has not learnt, nor does it seem it will ever learn, to do things in a different way than they, good measures mostly, have done over the past year. The 2008 election was an absolute one-off: it will never ever be replicated. This government carries within its own DNA the seeds of the coming defeat.
But what will exercise minds, and tongues, most in the coming weeks will be speculation on who Malta will appoint as the new European Commissioner, if Joe Borg is not appointed for a second term, and who, eventually, will Malta’s new Representative be, if Richard Cachia Caruana becomes Commissioner or whatever. The backbenchers, and not just JPO, will insist that they be consulted and that the consultation must be a real one.
Over and above all these crucial issues looms the economy. The privatisation of the dockyards will bring in some welcome revenue, even if that, strictly speaking, should not go to shore up the deficit. It will be more important to bring recurrent expenditure down. But the government, even though it has withstood calls and pressure from the unions, notably teachers and nurses, does not seem to have a strategy for this.
As to what will happen to the tourism figures (isn’t it somewhat symptomatic that time and again we revert to this sector?) it is still unclear whether we will face a continued meltdown on the First Quarter levels or whether added access, more advertising spend, and the easing of international recession, will bring the figures to near 2007 levels. Keeping Ryanair on board, but not so much as to give it overwhelming importance it can later withdraw at whim, may also be important.
The key to all this background may well be the interplay between past and present Ministers of Finance with all that this interplay between Tonio Fenech and John Dalli can mean; a game played on so many levels one easily gets lost in the many mazes.
And over and above all this, while deeply enmeshed in all that’s going on, is PN’s suave secretary general Paul Borg Olivier, who may well be waiting for today’s debacle to make some inroads into a situation that has clearly gotten out of hand.
On the Labour side, anything over an absolute majority clearly would be Joseph Muscat’s triumph, while anything improbably short of that could denote problems.
Labour’s campaign may have been more suited to a general election and there was precious little European in it, but if it works, Labour will reason, it will work time and again.
We thought we were beyond all this, but here we are: treating the election for five (or six) members of a 700+ Parliament as if it were a general election. Next, we will be treating the next local council elections as if they too were a general election. Déjà vu. It’s the past two legislatures for the third time.
Debatable debates
In days gone by, when the Prime Minister was about to debate with the Leader of the Opposition, Guardamangia would be closed to all.
Armed soldiers would block all roads leading to Television House (and St Luke’s Hospital) with crash barriers and barbed wire.
Only a handful of aides would be allowed to enter with the leaders.
And the recording of the debate would be consigned to a safe with a soldier standing guard lest it be stolen.
Other times, other customs.
Today, the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition debate so often they must often end up spending more time with each other than with their wives.
And yet, when it comes to the final Broadcasting Authority debate between the leaders, atavistic instincts still come to the fore.
The chairman and the chief executive of the Broadcasting Authority are there, bejacketed and ti-ed, officiously ensuring that the unruly media has all duly registered its attendance (it didn’t – but then there was no JPO among us). Ditto the PBS chairperson and chief executive and editor.
All waiting, but … no Leader of the Opposition.
When, after a lot of frantic phone calls, Joseph Muscat appears, cool as a cucumber, tempers boil over under a cover of courteousness.
Beyond media scrutiny, the pent-up emotions and frustrations boil over while Dr Muscat and Dr Gonzi are miked and Jason Micallef tries to make a joke as he straightens Dr Muscat’s tie, which ruffles feathers even more.
There is no evidence that, for all the panoply of state institutions and party pressures, that any final debate ever changed one person’s perceptions or voting intentions. The debate trundles on down tried and tested sound bites and tired arguments, which have been used so often they have become like old coins.
The leaders rush on to their next, overdue, appointment, leaving an electorate that once again has been talked down to and without really understanding the issues at stake.