An interesting thing happened to me last weekend. I was at the counting hall, taking the full immersion approach to understanding Perspex addicts. I was becoming quite the junkie myself when the results began to come out. My clouded mind at first thought this was another triumph for Malta Taghna Lkoll. I was quickly jolted back to reality.
The victory banging on the Perspex was accompanied by a loud tribal chant. Malta Taghna Lkoll? No. “Viva l-Labour! Viva l-Labour!”
One must be thankful for the truth wherever one finds it.
From where I stand
For all of us who believe in the PN – who know that its principled criticism of this Government’s performance is both true and important for the country’s welfare – last Saturday’s election was disappointing. True, the third seat was our target and we did achieve it. Our supporters see this as a ray of hope, and so it is.
However, the third seat does not wash away the bitterness of disappointment. We were not hoping to reverse the pro PL trend but we were hoping to make more inroads into the large majority which gave the PL its 2013 general election victory.
Our ability to deliver the message was restricted by public broadcasting bias and limited campaign funds.
We made positive proposals which were totally ignored. Perhaps our criticism of the Government’s lack of transparency, particularly the Henley & Partners and the Electro-Gas contracts, could have been more effective. But nobody denies that scrutiny and criticism of the Government is not about being ‘negative’ but about doing our job as an effective Opposition.
According to Joseph Muscat’s logic, the boy who said the emperor had no clothes should have been scolded for being negative. Actually, now that I remember the story, many people did indeed scold him. At least at first.
If the Government behaves abusively, it is the behaviour that is ‘negative’, not the people who call it out for what it is.
Simon Busuttil
While counting votes in Naxxar, a PL official told me that he actually deeply wished the PN to get the third seat “so that you can keep Simon”. He grinned nastily as he said this.
Muscat and his close collaborators are busy running down Simon Busuttil. Some people who should know better are drinking from the cool-aide.
Those of us with longer memories, however, have not forgotten that it takes time for a leader to establish himself. A year after Muscat took over PL leadership, he was not yet the Muscat he is today. Many, at the time, ridiculed him as the ex-Super One journalist. His luck struck when PN had to face internal troubles which was then externalised into a public showdown.
PN leaders have always showed strong leadership skills and proved to be visionary and far-reaching politicians. I am sure that Busuttil has it in him to follow in their path, with our support.
Influential Malta
The vote-counting process went well but, like many others, I think there’s something not quite right about the fact that we voted on Saturday and got to know the final result only on Wednesday morning.
One reason (only one, however) is that we started counting votes at noon on Sunday. Why? Apparently, it was because the EU Commission did not want our result to influence elections in the rest of Europe.
Perhaps someone should inform the Commission that we are not Germany. We wouldn’t dare find a system efficient enough to give the full, clear result within a few hours.
Sherlock Holmes
Last week’s anecdote on the phone-in competition – about the caller who believed the Sherlock Holmes stories were written by a Maltese politician – stirred quite an interest. Which politician was it? The editor made it a point to remind me that I should divulge the secret I could not reveal last week (due to it being a ‘day of political silence’). Many of my social media friends attempted a guess and quite a few did so correctly.
The answer is: Alfred Sant – now an MEP, previously MLP leader, always a novelist, never the Hound of the Baskervilles.
Claudette Buttigieg is a PN MP
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twitter: @ButClaudette