The closer the end of the election campaign draws – two weeks from today is the day when the votes cast are counted – the more we talk about scandals, rather than election programmes.
The Labour Party’s energy proposal, which hijacked the first two weeks of the campaign, hardly gets a mention. The Nationalist Party’s pledge to create 25,000 new jobs in the next five years finds no more space in the media. The two parties’ long list of proposals has been put on the side. They don’t even attack each other regarding who has copied the most from whom anymore.
Instead, public discussion has been taken over by the oil procurement investigation and all that it has brought with it – from presidential pardons to a Maltese clock; and the white block of substance at a Labour Party club – which Joseph Muscat believes was just solid ice when it is well known that solid ice does not get anyone into the kind of trouble to which Toni Abela refers in a recorded conversation.
Apart from these two issues, there was only one other matter that attracted attention this past week, and this is the shameful behaviour of a group of students during the leaders’ debate held at MCAST on Wednesday. The Labourite students’ verbal assault on the Prime Minister was a disgrace to them and those who organised them. Were it not for the hard work of the Nationalist Party and, in particular Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi, they would be out on the streets. Labour, it must be remembered, had closed down MCAST. Had I been PM, I would have been tempted to shut it down again and stop the €50 million investment taking place at the complex. Luckily for them, Dr Gonzi – hurt as he must have been – does not think like me.
To go back to the scandals being given so much prominence, I still distinctly remember Joseph Muscat putting an emphasis on what he described as the oil lobby days before the case erupted in a Sunday newspaper in January. This leads me to think that the Labour Party had an indication of what was about to happen.
What they could not anticipate – probably because they did not know all the details – was that in the longer term this particular issue could have backfired. While the Nationalist Party reacted quickly to the revelations made on oil purchasing and people have now been brought before the courts, the Labour Party has now found itself on the defence as the PN has come up with information that reveals what it says is a connection between the PL and the scandal.
Speaking of such, I do wonder whether these issues sway people one way or another. Seeing that neither party is perfect and both have mortal sins they try to cover up and defend, what people take into consideration when they go to vote is the overall picture: which party can guarantee the best way forward, based on what has happened in the past and the proposals being made.
The past is being mentioned very often, with the PN reminding people of the disastrous pre-1987 days and the failure of the Alfred Sant government in the 1990s, while the PL speaks of the last tumultuous legislature and the need for change. The future, as I wrote earlier, is not being mentioned much by either party.
What is clear is that the pre-planned events being organised by both political parties to drum up support are receiving little attention – except for those few minutes when the oil procurement and white block issues are brought up by the speakers.
What is also clear is that, unlike what he promised he would do just after midnight on 7 January when he pledged to answer all questions thrown at him, Joseph Muscat has not been so forthcoming in recent days. He has increasingly become uncomfortable when facing journalists and his obvious preference lately has been to speak only when he is being confronted by friendly media and in a controlled environment.
There’s another thing I’d like to bring up. While following hastily convened press conferences about the above-mentioned scandals on TV, I’ve noticed many journalists reading their questions from new technological gadgets that come on the market more frequently than the street sweeper comes to clean the road on which I live.
My reading of this is that, during the course of these events, these journalists are receiving instructions on what to ask, often bringing up matters that are unrelated to the issue at hand. If these questions are being received from their respective newsroom or employers, then it is more or less acceptable. It would be less so if these questions are being received from outsiders.
The 2008 election campaign was considered to have been dirty, and this when the Mistra scandal that emerged came up only in the last few days.
This time, matters have gone haywire much earlier and, with two weeks to go, we may still be in for some late twists and turns and perhaps still more revelations.
It is a pity that such matters erupted – or were made to erupt – in the middle of an election campaign. What is sure is that all this is not good for the political class as a whole, as more than ever politicians are being seen or perceived as seeking their own interests first, and this is putting it very mildly.
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