There is a ritualisation of everything in the Maltese psyche. Perhaps our counter-Reformation background and Catholic tradition is mainly to blame for this. Or maybe the British penchant for rigorous training and parade ground manoeuvres.

The Maltese love events that are steeped in tradition and where nothing is left to surprise.

We have feasts, Carnivals, both outdoor and indoor events that follow traditions, both public and also private events that follow well-worn paths.

And we have elections.

All ritualisation is based on an abhorrence of anything new, a ‘horror vacui’, a rejection of anything that could mean untested ground.

Elections have a ritual all of their own. As from tomorrow, when the starter’s gun goes off, a train of events, tried and tested through the years, is set in motion. The call for electoral assistants has already gone out – meaning an army of citizens already committing themselves to spend the day of the election, the previous night and the succeeding night to watch over and guard the ballot boxes, and supervise the voting in the voting rooms assigned to them.

Others will spend the next days and nights in the counting hall mainly turning over ballot papers under the eagle eyes of the candidates and putting them in the appropriate pigeon-holes.

Starting tomorrow, other people will be going round houses with the police to distribute the voting documents.

Candidates will start submitting their nominations.

While all this is going on, individual candidates have long been preparing their teams, contacting people, going round houses and tackling reluctant voters.

All this is so predictable and so usual. What may be unusual elsewhere but usual in the Maltese context is the final rush on Election Day with superhuman efforts to get out the very last possible vote even if it means taking a half-dead person to vote … and die.

The two parties are well matched in resources. Each has an army of volunteers it calls on and these volunteers make up in enthusiasm what they otherwise lack.

This is the part of the election iceberg that is visible above sea level. Underneath it, there is yet another army of backroom workers toiling away – some at party headquarters and others at the individual offices of the candidates.

Great fun will be had by all, almost, just almost, regardless of who wins. People come together for a common cause and in the interaction they may fight, they may bicker, but in the end they all push for the common cause.

I said ‘almost regardless of who wins’ and this may sound strange to outsiders. The election campaign however so absorbs energies that at the end people are simply so tired by the whole thing that by 8 March many of them will be thanking heaven that yet another election is almost over and they can go back to their usual humdrum and unexciting lives.

It is just a little different but then not different at all from the Palio in Siena where days of mounting tension and once again accentuated ritualisation (including the blessing of the horses in the churches), only one contrada is declared winner and its supporters go into an orgy of celebrations and drinking while the rest slink back to their homes, putting their coloured flags back into their pockets.

A Palio winner gets five minutes of fame and a palio made of rich drapes. An election winner, in the Maltese context, gets everything and then some.

This is where the whole system starts to creak. For despite their willingness, their eagerness, their readiness to spend hours and days dedicated to the party they support, that does not make them the best candidates later on to implement the party’s manifesto, to manage the bureaucracy, to ensure the ministers are kept on their toes and prepared for the thousand and one unexpected events that confront a sitting administration.

We have now had the experience of both parties spending a long time in government and we are not impressed at all. There is of course a difference, mostly between the different timelines but also between the basic orientations of the two parties, since one cannot ever forget Labour’s grave sins against human rights.

As for the rest, however, both parties carry more than their share of incompetents and party men visibly out of their depth. They may try to mask this by adding staff to the ministry but the mental approach will still be basically the same.

Then there is another issue, perhaps the most basic of all: the ritualisation of the electoral process is based on the assumption that nothing new will come our way. We have been seen this many times, and twice at least in recent legislatures we have seen the consequences of the deep instability now enshrined in our political environment.

Twice we have seen governments rocked and once pulled down by a maverick in their ranks (and this time round, although the government ended its term, it was booted out by its maverick MP and the Budget remains suspended.

Whatever the polls have been saying, I predict that come the Day, the two parties will once again be neck and neck (thus reinforcing the ritualisation myth of Maltese politics), risking further instability down the line after the stress of these two months dies down and we all come to realise that bar the possible change of the chap at Castille, we will still be very much in the same position we are in now.

The two parties are still on a roll. All they can think of is winning the election, secondarily to get more votes than the other lot. This they will try to do by squeezing the electorate for more and more votes from the unwilling, the dissidents, the reluctant. Until there are no more voters to run after, no lost sheep to round up, no more people to bring in from abroad.

Maybe then, but I seriously doubt if this is, or will ever be, the case, we may come to realize the template must be changed, the mindset restructured and maybe at long last we get to finally collaborate and act together in the interests of common good. There is much more to be gained if we come together and share power, decisions, and strategies than in this gargantuan struggle to win over the other side even while we have exactly the same proposals to make.

A visitor from Mars, who understands Maltese and all its nuances, will be confused by these two parties who so resemble each other. What a visitor from Mars could see is something the Maltese public cannot see.

I blame the extreme ritualisation for that.

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