The PN advert says: ‘It’s time to focus’ but the election campaign has anything but focus.

We are buffeted by claims and counter claims, stories and allegations with Austin Gatt under the spotlight at one end and Toni Abela at the other.

The election campaign has disintegrated into shallow and intricate claims that it would take a person who is hooked full-time on television and/or the news portals to just follow, let alone form an opinion.

Many simply do not have that time. Sometimes, it would also help to have multiple television screens like they have on television stations so as to be able to follow the events as they occur and even then, they could very well end up not understanding the issues involved.

We have come to take as normal that each election has to have its quota of allegations of sleaze. Since last time, in 2008, the allegations of sleaze came rather late in the day; this time they have made sure they are early.

Hence the allegations of sleaze in fuel procurement, which tie in nicely with the PL proposal for a new power station working on gas.

PN, on its part, seems to have a penchant for unauthorized recordings of key people, first Tony Zarb and now Toni Abela.

I do not think these allegations, even if they are all proved, are material to the outcome of the election. People who have already decided to vote PL will not be swayed with the recordings of Mr Zarb or Dr Abela. And people who have already decided to vote PN will not believe the allegations regarding fuel procurement.

The real issue of the election, I hold, will not be swayed by these allegations and counter-allegations.

The real issue, as I see it, of the coming election, is the behaviour of people who would normally have voted PN but who may decide to abstain, vote AD or even switch to Labour. With an electoral base wider than the PL’s, the PN is also very fragile and open to undermining.

I was not aware of this facet of the election game but I think that many PN candidates must have faced the same situation over and over again in their campaigning – the people who last time voted PN or who come from a PN background but who this time refuse, or say they will refuse, to do so because of some issue that has really angered and upset them.

This is not the first time such an attitude has surfaced. In the run-up to the EU referendum, many PN activists repeatedly met people of normal PN persuasion who just would not vote for accession to the EU because, in one case I remember, the light bulb at the end of their alley had not been replaced when it burnt out.

In other words, people are quite capable of seeing the micro and disregarding the macro even when big issues are at stake. Let alone in this election when there are no big stakes at play. But that’s the way it is.

To my surprise I found myself listening to diehard PN supporters who said, hinted, swore and asserted they will not vote PN on 9 March.

Now maybe they were bluffing, maybe come the day they will troop down to the polling station and cast their vote. But maybe, equally maybe, they will stay at home and frame their unused election voting document for future reference, to show the party next time that they kept their word and did not vote. Sort of like what Alfred Sant did in the referendum when he brought out the voting document to show he had not voted.

I have heard of PN supporters who clearly expected to get something to which they had absolutely no right, but the ones I heard about regarded more mundane things.

I would have thought, for instance, that some PN activists would have wanted to get a promotion or to remove a PL supporter from some post and take it themselves. I cannot say these things do not happen, but what I heard was quite the opposite.

I heard of their having what they believed were quite legitimate claims that were completely ignored by the people who could decide.

I heard huge complaints about the Customer Care officers in many ministries and even at the Office of the Prime Minister who many times are not there when someone wants to call them, who do not reply to communications, who say they have not received something from an outlying office when the people in this outlying office swear they sent in the required document.

Of course, I also heard of people who are clearly PL supporters who have been given what they requested while people who are PN supporters are sidelined and disregarded.

This and much worse must have been told to Simon Busuttil ever since he stepped in to siphon off supporters’ anger, to the Prime Minister himself when he goes around and speaks to people, to the PN candidates when they go on house visits.

I am not saying these complaints are well founded or that PN supporters must be placated by being given all that they demand. Even so, however, it all depends on what is going on in the minds of these voters, not what you and I think they should think.

It is one thing to talk macro and speak about the great issues of the country, and it is quite another thing to speak micro about what people consider as being owed by their government.

It is true that, ever since 1987, Malta is full of people who tell you they were at Tal-Barrani, and then leave you to speculate whether that was true or not. People make all sorts of claims they come to believe is owed to them. And people are quite ready to ship their party if they believe their claims were not heeded, or if they believe the people in the ministries were making fun of them and binning their requests as soon as the door closed on the complainants.

The structures put in by the government, such as multiple Customer Care structures at every government enterprise, have clearly not functioned and people are still claiming they did not receive any redress.

And who is now to investigate case by case to see whether the claim is true or not?

In many of the cases I listened to, solving the complaint, at least to my untrained mind, would not have cost anything or anything much. But some people seem to have had the good fortune of having their complaints considered and others seem vexed because all doors were shut to them.

All this is obviously more valid for government employment in the wider sense of the word than for people in the private sector for whom the government, at best, come in where taxes are involved.

The government sector, in its wide accession, has roots going back to the 1970s and 1980s and is thus more PL-oriented so goodies such as promotions or postings come more its way.

But PN supporters do not see things this way. They may be wrong and maybe to placate them would involve quite a bit of arm-twisting and creating more injustices than are solved, but that’s not how the PN supporters I was hearing talk see things.

And let me say that they are really but really virulent and scathing about the Gonzi leadership. Far more than all the virulent and scathing speeches made by the so-called rebels in the last days of the previous legislature.

The time for rebel MPs is now over, give or take an appearance or two on One TV. But the time of these disenchanted PN voters is still coming.

And, so far, they do not seem to have any sort of redress opened for them.

Speaking at Birkirkara last Monday, Dr Gonzi addressed this issue by admitting ‘some’ may be angry. However, in his next breath, he chided them and told them to focus on the wider picture.

Let me tell him: that will not cut any ice with the complainants. And they are definitely not ‘some’.

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