I must have touched a raw nerve when I recently told Dr Simon Busuttil during a TVAM morning discussion earlier in the week that not only has his party not found enough time to elaborate upon its own manifesto proposals due to the time spent being negative throughout the campaign, but worse than that: since he himself became deputy leader on 30 November, the party has become even more decisively and predictably increasingly negative.

Bringing out the sharp contrast between his approach since then and the dignified manner and gravitas that Louis Grech has offered since he assumed the PL Deputy Leadership role dampened even further public perception about GonziPN’s leader in waiting. So much so that many floating voters and disillusioned voters that I come across during home visits offer the opinion – of their own free will – that Dr Busuttil who performed rather well in Brussels as an MEP (regardless of having a more than friendly media regularly on his side) has proved to be such a let down in his uncomfortable role as party deputy leader.

But, if you’ll pardon the expression, he is their choice, so it is not for me to decide who should be the PN’s number two or prospective number one. Although I am quite sure that a couple of aspirants to the throne must be thanking their lucky stars that, through his lacklustre performance and a possible but not certain GonziPN electoral defeat, their succession planning schemes and strategies must have suddenly earned a windfall cutting edge. Gratis.

I am not privy to poll findings but my gut feeling is that although some mud always tends to stick, GonziPN are realising that being predictably negative tends to annoy even most of their own supporters, except for the hard line rank and file who are in urgent need of someone to fire their imagination in the wake of such a dismal legislature full of strategic and ill-timed mistakes and wrong decisions that are likely to cost GonziPN an erosion of votes, come Saturday.

I am immune to criticism. It is part of the game and anyone too touchy about such an approach should not join the political fray in the first place.

But although I have been reliably told that GonziPN have taken more than a hard look at the way US Presidential campaigns have been conducted, particularly in the social media through the presence on the spot of the son of their so-called IT guru, it is my strictly personal opinion that the GonziPN campaign has reached an all time low in its negative campaigning that has even outclassed and outsmarted the same sources that they drew on during a particular orientation visit.

There were times when the PL itself had over done its negativity too in the past in pre-Joseph Muscat years. But, as a former Nationalist pointed out last week, this is precisely the fundamental problem. Rather than coming up with new tactics and strategies that show they can think outside the box in terms of creativity and innovative ideas, GonziPN are making even worse mistakes than the PL did in the past when it lost a series of elections in succession.

I still cannot understand why GonziPN seem to have deliberately or unwittingly walked straight into such a trap, but then this might be nothing more than a knee-jerk reaction to the long growing realisation that gone are the days when GonziPN could ‘sell’ itself as the best option – strictly on its own merits. This makes it easier to understand why, long ago, the powers that be took the strategic decision to play the fear factor to the hilt.

I am more than convinced that when push comes to shove and if – please note an emphatic IF – GonziPN loses the elections, the more respectable elements within the party will be turning their guns not only on their leadership (and I am using the plural deliberately) but also on the election strategists and fellow social media bedfellows who are likely to prove to be GonziPN’s own undoing. This will be particular be for alienating so many people who are already the victims of election fatigue after such a long drawn out, exhaustive and exhausting election campaign – the length of which can only be put at the door of GonziPN himself and all those kitchen cabinet advisors who told him to max out his stay at the helm of the country.

Even though it remains an uphill struggle for the PL up to the very last minute when polling booths close next Saturday, the PM has been misreading public sentiment since almost a year ago.

This is not only my personal opinion or that of my party but it has also been echoed in the editorials of various newspapers in recent months.

Technically speaking, when dissent grew and spread even further within PN ranks in July with a new twist of events, Dr Gonzi had every right to continue governing but his dismissive remark: “I take note and I move on” has proved to be his own undoing.

I am not denying his exercising of such a right but, as the passage of time has shown, this has turned out to be yet another example of him misreading public sentiment, in the same way he did over the self award of a hefty salary rise to Cabinet Ministers and also in the case of the sharp increase in water and electricity prices – where he even boasted that he would be voting wholeheartedly for such a stiff hike! And he did.

As a Times editorial commented on Saturday, 21 July last year – even though the latest developments have drastically changed the parameters of the political situation, Dr Gonzi persists, wrongly, in dragging his feet.

Herein lies the rub: “He believes in holding on to the last moment when, clearly, this is counter-productive as the delay could hit the economy in more ways than one”.

We could get the usual mantra that Spain, Greece and Ireland might have fared worse than us, but that comes as somewhat small consolation.

We are used to comparing ourselves with the achievers rather than the under performers.

The bottom line of such a strategic mistake is that even were one to forget the dissent within his own parliamentary group, it seemed then and has now been confirmed that Dr Gonzi could no longer buy more time in government without losing more popular support.

Even the editorial of this newspaper made a level headed assessment on the 15th July 2012 when it commented: “This state of limbo that has created a possible lame duck government that is unable to pass a single Bill has not been good for the country by any stretch of the imagination… There is no doubt that something simply had to be done to address the rot within the governing Nationalist Party… the Nationalist Party must get its house in absolute order or go to the polls”.

Given that such an objective assessment was made some nine whole months ago, with the benefit of hindsight no one can be blamed for concluding that, since then, GonziPN has more than taken its time to either put its own house in absolute order or else to go to the polls!

The electorate at large seem disillusioned mostly both by the various cases of corruption that seem to have been allowed to fester under the watch of this administration – leaving it to another newspaper’s investigative story for things to finally begin to move – but even more so by the capricious manner in which the country had been deliberately left in a political quandary.

One can understand the frustration within GonziPN ranks because not only have they lost many of their traditional voters since then, but their former belief that the opening of the new parliament, theatre and city gate would do the trick for them has failed to materialise or pay the expected dividends.

It is for this reason that I am in total agreement with an independent newspaper’s editorial comment last Summer that:

“Whether the projects now in the pipeline will be ready or not before election time makes no difference to the prospects of the PN.”

The fact that the GonziPN strategists actually believed such a game plan could pay political dividends says a lot about their whole misjudging of public sentiment.

While I will only comment on the outcome once the election results are known, it is only when one fully comprehends such a scenario that one can understand why GonziPN has decided to turn the PN into a predictably negative party – no matter how strong the disclaimers of Gonzi and Busuttil might sound or be made to sound. I am saying so because I am confident that they are smart enough and intelligent enough to realise that they are likely to pay a high price for such a misjudgement.

Unfortunately, the Prime Minister has ended up as a victim of his own rhetoric: even worse than the famous or infamous emperor with no clothes.

The electorate will not forgive him that easily for having stubbornly clung on to power to try and give the impression that he would be having it his way, when logic had long dictated that he should have called an election far earlier so that the country could concentrate on issues that really matter for the people’s well being.

In the long run, this could prove to be to the detriment of not only the country but also of his own party itself, that in a way might only reinvent itself if it finds itself coerced into spending some time in opposition.

But I have never been one to count chickens before they are hatched.

Expect GonziPN to be supported till the end – especially by those fellow travellers who have never had it so good, including those who were deeply involved in actually drawing up the manifesto itself as well as their English language ads as well as all those who have tugged the Castille OPM-dictated line to time the launch of certain projects – even ostensibly private sector related – in order to give a much needed boost to GonziPN’s long waning support and credibility.

With all this in mind, it does not take a political guru to realize why PN nowadays stands for “Predictably Negative”.

Anyway, nobody can take seriously S. Busuttil’s claims that his party should be trusted now that he is around. He only took over months ago, but his party will win and/or lose trust on the basis of its broken promises and dismal performance in office during the past legislature.

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