By Wednesday we would have reached the halfway stage of the election campaign, and no doubt both major parties will be upping their presence in the streets and in the media to try to lure the last remaining doubtful voters, if any still exist.

So far, we have had the energy and tablets issue that have been in the forefront of an otherwise weak campaign from both ends, with the Labour Party still in the process of presenting its comprehensive election programme to the public. Labour says it is dishing out proposals one by one for people to understand them better, while the Nationalist Party attacks Labour for presenting as its own proposals plans that have already been implemented or were announced in the budget for 2013, which the PL voted against.

With the feast of St Paul coming in the first part of the campaign and with Carnival weekend coming up next, the campaign has had its ups-and-downs. But once Ash Wednesday is over, both parties will be raising their stakes and we are bound to be inundated – more than we have already been – with messages that “we are the best” and “the others have nothing to show”.

The campaign is bound to increase in tempo after the coming weekend, during which the political activities will be kept to a minimum because of the Carnival activities. From then onwards it will then intensify until the people cast their vote on 9 March.

But the campaign is not just mass meetings, visits to open markets and discussions under a large tent. It will be the uncovering of certain issues that are intended to cause trouble to the other side. Scandals that come up in the last days can sway people one way or the other. We saw it happening in the last election, when the Mistra scandal came up right in the last few days and had a great impact on the way people voted.

Will we have a similar thing this time round? Will one of the parties unearth something that involves a leading personality or someone close to him or her to try to win votes? Is there something so huge that is still being kept under wraps for it to be unveiled in the latter stages of the campaign for it to have the strongest effect?

We must wait and see. So far, Labour is still leading and, frankly, few would have expected otherwise. The Labour Party are strong favourites to win the election for several reasons, but this actually means that the pressure is all on them.