This time next week we will know the outcome of next Saturday’s local council election which involves around half of the Maltese electorate.

Although local elections do not normally attract the same massive turnout as general elections, this time, with all this uncertainty regarding the political situation and with all the election talk we have been having, it is different.

Besides, as said, half the population is being asked to vote, so that puts the local council election a notch or two higher than how we used to perceive them.

There are two preliminary points I want to make here.

First, politics in Malta has proved to be a two-party affair through and through. There have been times when a third party tried to get in but at each election, especially the general ones, the third party got gobbled up. Maybe that should not have happened, but it did. Maybe the two parties got the people to believe that by eliminating the third party, they would be eliminating uncertainty and confusion. We now know they didn’t.

Alternattiva Demokratika is trying its luck again in these elections. I wish them well, but unless things change drastically on Saturday, I still do not see them becoming a viable force in the country. A pity.

As we all know, elections pit the two big parties head to head with a very small margin between them. But that’s on a national scale. On a locality-by-locality basis, these are rather clearer: some localities are traditionally Nationalist and some are traditionally Labourite. As we shall see, there are very few localities where the majority might change.

This time, I hope, there will be one or two significant changes.

The real key issue this time is, I believe, Mosta. Now Mosta is traditionally a Nationalist stronghold so it was a surprise that Labour got to win it last time. There was that campaign about the plumber whose remuneration in salary and overtime was broadcast over and over again. But there was also a tired Nationalist administration that had, quite simply, run out of steam.

The problem was that Labour then shot itself in the foot when it ruled that the person who got the most votes would become mayor. And that person was a rather funny and likeable guy, a family doctor too, Paul Chetcuti Caruana, who turned out to be a complete failure as an administrator.

We lived there for two-and-a-half years so we know a bit. Mosta has what must be the worst streets in Malta. The Santa Margerita area where we lived has real boneshaker streets. Every year the council used to send round a man or two and fill in the more conspicuous potholes, which the rains would restore the next autumn.

Of course, the fault does not lie with this mayor’s administration. When the area was built up, we as a country still followed the traditional way of doing things. First the entire street has to be built up with residences, then the street is done, usually after putting up with years of mud and dust, depending on the season. ‘Doing up the street’ used to consist of just a layer or two of tarmac and that was it. Today, we do streets, and roads differently and much better. But these old streets need to be taken up and redone almost from scratch.

Friends and acquaintances who support Labour shared with me the anger I felt at the Mosta mayor and the dissent within the Labour camp in the council. I really can’t understand why Joe Muscat allowed the mayor to stay on for the full term instead of turfing him out years ago and allowing a Labour-run majority to show how it could do things better.

To come up now with a design for a new playground (anyone can do that in half an hour in full colour) or to try and spin stories that the mayor did not know there were government funds available to redo the streets, when all Malta knew and when other Labour-led councils got huge government funds, is pathetic.

Dr Muscat is right to say the previous PN-led councils ran up a huge debt, which this mayor had to pay. The shenanigans of the previous PN administrations are maybe forgotten now except by many people in Mosta. Who can remember the huge, dangerous, stone troughs on every corner in very shabby and primitive traffic-calming measures? Or the controversies surrounding the routing of traffic especially around the main square?

We will see next Saturday whether there will be a regime change at Mosta or not.

I do not believe there will be a regime change in my hometown, Ħamrun, though this locality used to have a PN majority some years back. The town has an ageing population and many young people have gone to live elsewhere (to return only for San Gejtanu). Socially, the town has deteriorated from an up and coming locality, a commercial centre, to one with an increased percentage of people on relief and social assistance.

The Labour majority have now gone into construction – they have taken over the old and useless market and turned it into a big council centre and a huge underground car park, which they are now offering to people to use.

Maybe I am wrong, but I was, and still am, very much against this development, even had it been done by a PN administration. It was ironical that the person who had thought it all out, and who struggled to get the Mepa permit and approval by the government, ended up not being invited to its opening. But that’s a story in a story.

Nor do I think there will be a regime change in Sliema. Years ago, in 1987, on that day of shame when the people in my hometown turned a feast into a murderous orgy of fighting and bottle-throwing, I remember I had to take the priest who was to lead the procession to Sliema. I remember the contrast between the primitiveness of the fighting and the relaxed, civilised atmosphere of people enjoying the evening breeze and walking on the Front.

Years later, when our offices were in Sliema, I used to enjoy even more the civility and the pleasant way of life, though even then we had nowhere to park. Since then, of course, Sliema has had to endure endless pillage and construction galore that has changed it.

Still, there will be no regime change on Saturday, not even after such a turmoil-filled term with scandals about the mayor, councillors being arrested (and strip-searched) and shouting matches at council meetings.

Even so, the revelations of these days with recordings of the mayor, and now of a councillor, are damaging, very damaging. The Nationalist Party must stop the candidature of the man who is being claimed to differentiate between his employees according to whether they support PN or PL.

In the midst of all this, it is a pity, and more than a pity, to have candidates from the winning side being pawns and foot soldiers of two PN MPs.

But where there may be a regime change is St Paul’s Bay. This may happen because of demographic change as more people decide to live in the vast area that includes Buġibba and Qawra, which used to have just holiday flats.

I see no point in the present PL campaign against the mayor. There is a libel case on this issue but I distinctly remember, many years back, being involved in the brave struggle by Zepp, Censu Galea’s brother-in-law, who succeeded against huge odds in overcoming the stacked odds that favoured KIP (Koperattiva Indafa Pubblika, that folded later) which seemed to be favoured by Labour-led councils for waste collection against his Northern Cleaning.

That’s many, many years ago. When Graziella Galea, today’s mayor, was not even on the council, if I remember right.

Still, my sources tell me that St Paul’s Bay under Ms Galea did not fulfil the expectations of her own PN supporters.

We’ll see on Saturday. Maybe there may be a regime change there too.

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