Well. Actually it’s less than two weeks. But the campaign will kick off in earnest now, as the political parties make the final push before going to the polls.
Yesterday saw the gathering of thousands of supporters from both sides of the divide as the PN held a mass meeting in Naxxar, while the Labour Party held a meeting in Mqabba.
Both parties are fending off allegations of sleaze, as the mudslinging escalated. The PN is focused on portraying the PL as a party that tried to interfere in a police investigation into alleged drug “cutting” at a Labour Party Club. The PN claimed that both deputy leader Toni Abela knew about the case, as did leader Joseph Muscat. The allegations saw the PL leader go quiet for a few days, but has since broken his silence and said that had his deputy been an election candidate, he would have had to withdraw. He also admitted “making mistakes”.
The PL, on the other hand, continues to ask questions about the oil procurement scandal and has called for Finance Minister Tonio Fenech to withdraw his candidacy for the election. While it seems that there is a lot more beneath the surface of the story, it also seems that the PL is intent on stabbing in the dark and throwing ‘any old allegation’ out there in an effort to discredit the PN.
It is literally trench warfare, a war of attrition that will do neither party favours in the long run, and it will not do any good for Malta either. We may think that the whole world stops when Malta goes to the polls, but that is not the case. Just as EU member states and the financial markets are monitoring the ongoing election in Italy, they are also monitoring what is going on here. If the markets sense that there is instability, our borrowing costs would skyrocket – something that would undo the great strides our economy has managed to make in the midst of the eurozone crisis. Malta’s economy outperformed most EU members in terms of GDP growth, and it is set to continue to grow, with lower projected unemployment and a softening of inflation. Yet, it all hinges on what goes on in the next two weeks.
Bother parties ambled into this campaign, but it quickly gained momentum and boy has it been a long one. Just as everyone thinks that the final ‘bombshell’ is dropped, the other party comes up with something even bigger and that has been the pattern.
If the polls are to be believed, the PN has narrowed the gap to 11 points, and the same poll is showing a slowdown in the swing to the PL. But the Labour Party still seems to be enjoying a very healthy lead. The question now is, does the PN have the ammunition to close that gap, or will Labour pull away once more as the day of reckoning approaches?
They say a day is a very long time in politics, we have two weeks of campaigning left to go and we are sure that more issues will come to the fore as the stakes are raised even higher.