There was a marked difference between the prime minister’s bearing and attitude in this campaign and in the electoral campaign last year.

Last year, he was brimming with confidence, bright and electric, even though it was a narrowly fought general election and there was something real at stake: the government. His positive demeanour and fizzing enthusiasm were infectious. He lit up rooms and carried crowds.

Not so during this campaign. He ended up having to fight it like a general election, only of course not quite, all the while carrying on with his day job and the draining problems it brings with it. His counterpart, meanwhile, had no such constraints. He was free to do nothing else but.

There were times in this campaign when Gonzi looked preoccupied and harried, brow-beaten. The famous smile and the laughing self-confidence were gone. During last Tuesday’s Broadcasting Authority debate the camera caught him unawares looking like somebody stood against a wall waiting to be shot.

It didn’t help that someone had chosen – no doubt deliberately and with an ulterior motive – to place him against a deeply unflattering grey background while Muscat was placed against a glowing screen of flattering sunrise red.

Every time I have seen the prime minister on television recently, including the post-election press conference on Sunday, he has spoken as though his self-belief is faltering and self-doubt has set in. I am not surprised, because he is surrounded by people who are on a major ego trip. They cannot see beyond their own personal agenda. It’s Me, Myself and I all the way.

Some MPs on the government bench appear to be going out of their way to undermine their boss. Indeed, they appear to have forgotten that yes, he is their boss. They are throwing their weight around and behaving in the most appalling fashion. The sooner they get their act together and understand that this is the best way to end up reviled by the very people who voted them in, the better.

Electors don’t elect politicians so that they can spend the next five years sulking or demanding this or that for themselves. They elect them to represent their – the electors’ – interests. Yet some MPs appear to believe that their primary concern is now no more than their own personal interest and they have lost sight completely of the people who elected them and of what those people want.

Read my lips, boys: we voted you in because we wanted the Nationalist Party in government, because we admire Lawrence Gonzi and respect him, and because we want him to be prime minister for five years and possibly longer. We did not elect you so that you can shirk your political duties, demand things for yourselves, and threaten to destabilise the government if you don’t get what you want. Carry on doing this and you can expect a rocket under your seat in four years’ time, and not our votes.

By not pulling the same rope as Lawrence Gonzi, by failing to cooperate with him because you’re ‘hurt’ or because your colleague got something that you didn’t, you are undermining the government. In undermining the government, you are betraying your constituents, who elected you because they expressly do not want Labour in government.

If you don’t wish to carry on representing your constituents – who didn’t elect you personally but as a representative of the Nationalist Party – then do the decent and honourable thing and leave. Make way for somebody who is capable of putting the interests of the government, and of the constituents who voted him in to work for that government, before his own egocentric concerns.

The Labour Party hasn’t ‘outed’ you or even given much coverage to your disgraceful behaviour because it hopes to win advantage from the situation, by stirring the pot, manipulating you, and letting it go on for long enough until the whole thing blows up in your faces. And then we, who voted you in, will wind up with the government that you deserve because you care more about yourselves than you do about us. You should be ashamed.

Whoever is eroding the prime minister’s confidence, exhausting him with idiocy, throwing tantrums and tripping him up should stop it now, close ranks and pull together. Some people need to learn that it’s not about them.

Another thing: it’s clear that the prime minister is annoyed and perhaps even feels demeaned at having to deal with an ex-Super One employee as his opposite number. He doesn’t engage with him as he did with Alfred Sant. He holds back in the way one would do when dealing with somebody of inferior intellectual ability who is also significantly less mature. One’s first instinct is to avoid letting go to create a fair balance, but while that might be appropriate at a dinner-table, it’s not appropriate in a televised debate between two party leaders.

Lawrence Gonzi should just go for the jugular with that famous finesse and turn his opposite number into mincemeat. He’s more than capable of doing it and he shouldn’t be so fastidious about it.

It’s demoralising when no matter how hard you’ve worked, no matter what successes you’ve accumulated for the country, no matter that you are a hundred times more capable and reliable, people are prepared to swap you Joseph Muscat, and even your own people are behaving like spoiled children.

The prime minister should bear in mind, at all times, that when it comes to Joseph Muscat, he is by far the better man. The gathering together into Joseph Muscat’s ragtag ‘coalition of disaffection’ of people who are prepared to use their sacred vote like a bribe or a blackmail letter does not diminish Dr Gonzi’s qualities or make him less than he was. Opinions cannot change reality, despite the magical thinking of many. And above all, opinions are transitory, but some facts are permanent. Lawrence Gonzi is what he is and Joseph Muscat is what he is. There is no comparison.

I can’t help but remember how people bayed for Fenech Adami’s blood in 1996, how scathing they were, how contemptuous, how ready to ‘teach him a lesson’ – by voting Labour, how they spat on his name and wanted him out. Just 22 months later, he was a returning hero and they were practically kissing the ground he walked on in relief and gratitude. That’s the way it goes.

As for using your sacred vote to teach somebody else, what can I say about the sort of person who does that? A real man, a real woman, a person of honour, somebody who is not a coward, expresses himself or herself personally, face to face, or publicly, as I and others do. That is what real, sophisticated democracy is all about. Using your vote as a threat or a bribe is the democracy of the most backward villages in southern Italy in the 1950s, and if you don’t believe me I have a couple of anthropological studies I can send you.

Daphne Caruana Galizia’s blog is at www.daphnecaruanagalizia.com