Last Monday’s testimony in court and the confrontation between JPO and Daphne (in a case that had nothing to do with the subject of the acrimony) brought back memories but also distortions about that now-rather-distant March 2008.

The revelations last Monday that JPO was coached by Peppi Azzopardi have taken centre stage with many people acting as if they have just woken up from a long sleep, some in outrage, and with Peppi clarifying this and that but finally admitting to JPO’s claim.

However, it is still rather early to try and understand what happened in those final convulsive days before the election, when most expected an Alfred Sant victory, only for him to be pipped at the post by Lawrence Gonzi.

My concern is that people may be so taken up by this late revelation that they might fail to see the grand picture.

First of all, some questions:

· Did Lawrence Gonzi win the election or did Alfred Sant lose it?

· Or rather, did Lawrence Gonzi win the election by some 1,800 votes or did he lose the 13,000 votes majority his party had the previous time?

· Did JPO win the election for the PN or did he seriously risk losing it for the PN?

There were other issues that were also relevant and, the election result being so knife-edge, each and every strand mattered. We are still in rumour-land here; there are mysteries that need to be unravelled, and the sooner they are, the better for the country.

For myself, I tend to think the vote by Maltese people married to asylum seekers may have been very relevant to the outcome, in view of rumours that seem to have been spread among that segment of the population.

On rather surer ground, I know that March 2008 saw a spate of quick Mepa decisions, usually on the side of the developers, some of which have since been reversed by Mepa case officers.

Were these relevant? Everything is relevant.

Some days after the election, Richard Cachia Caruana and Lawrence Zammit exceptionally co-authored an article in which they explained how the war, sorry the election, was won.

I can’t remember now if the JPO saga featured in it, though I suspect it did not. For this is one basic fact about the saga: it had nothing to do with PN strategy. It was a very good election card in Labour’s hands but in my opinion it was badly played.

JPO’s now famous antics (let me jog memories: on Saturday afternoon JPO sensed Dr Sant was targeting him as an election card: he followed Dr Sant to Gozo but somehow Dr Sant eluded him and left him stranded. JPO followed him to Mistra where Dr Sant held a press conference in situ but again Dr Sant eluded him. Then on Monday, JPO, having cried his heart out at a Mosta PN meeting on Sunday morning and having been vigorously applauded and, we now learn, having meanwhile been coached by Peppi Azzopardi, and having been quickly given a press card by MediaLink, confirmed in double quick time by DOI, confronted Dr Sant at a Broadcasting Authority press conference and, as we all know, Dr Sant shied away from the confrontation (fatally) are all there, but one way to analyse the result is to read it as Dr Sant and MLP making inroads into the PN base but not enough to win.

There is something that eludes many. The fact that Dr Sant unleashed all the information he had on JPO with documents and everything at the final election meeting held at Luxol Grounds. That, for me, was a fatal mistake. For as all know, only the party supporters got to hear that (and in that din at Luxol with everyone expecting a Labour victory I doubt if anyone heard him). But the really important people, those who were wavering, never got to hear it because next day’s papers, it being the so-called day of reflection, never printed the speech. And it was only carried on television news that same evening, if it ever did.

Maybe Dr Sant got hold of the really incriminating documents (in his opinion at least) at the very last minute but if he had made his revelations a week earlier, I am sure the election would have gone his way and the country would have been spared the uncertainty it has had ever since. For a one-seat majority, a 1,800 vote majority is uncertainty writ large. If the PN thinks that by retaining power, by bringing about the public transport reform, by creating a new Parliament and City Gate and by being in government at a time of international recession they have made signal achievements, they have done it on a very thin majority and with a government from time to time incapacitated by one or other of its rather excited backbenchers. I am sure Lawrence Gonzi agrees with me that this is no way to govern.

Through this, it’s also true, we now have divorce – whether that is a plus or otherwise I leave it to readers to decide.

There is something else I want to unburden myself of. Some days before the JPO saga, I was fed information accusing two key MLP figures, Charles Mangion and Karmenu Vella, regarding, if I remember correctly, some flats in Birżebbuġa. After considering it, I refused to run it.

However, on that Saturday evening, after a day running after Dr Sant, JPO held a press conference in which he revealed this story.

So we had two stories – both about politicians on opposite sides, both to do with property issues. The two stories were unequal: in fact the Charles Mangion – Karmenu Vella story died a natural death while the JPO saga continues and continues.

In a way it is not just the nature of the issues, but also because of the different ways that politicians handle facts or allegations thrown at them. It sloughed off the backs of Dr Mangion and Mr Vella as if nothing really happened, whereas JPO with his subsequent denials and complicated reasoning attracted more attention to himself.

It is clear that we are gradually putting ourselves back in election mode and, elections in Malta being what they always are, the two sides, whatever the polls are saying right now, will at the end be very near each other. The coming local council election next March, when half the population goes to vote, will be a harbinger of things to come. But there’s nothing that beats a general election in Malta when everything, but everything, is up for grabs.

If there’s anything to be learnt from 2008, it’s the team with the most strands in its hands that wins, the team with the better overall approach, the team with the slicker approach to sudden eruptions, while the team with the most assumptions risks falling by the wayside.

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