By the time readers are reading this newspaper, the turnout of yesterday's voting will have been known. If people delayed going for their paper, by the time they get it they would already have had a likely indication of the referendum's result.

But we will all have to wait until next Saturday to begin to learn the results of the local council elections, and maybe Sunday until we have the final picture.

The accent today is on the results of the Spring Hunting Referendum but bar things like incidents pre- or post-result, and the inevitable controversies, the attention will soon once again be drawn to the perennial tussle between the parties and that is what will be analysed and dissected after the next weekend.

This article has no intention of prejudging the results. There will be ample time for analysis once the whole results are in.

That will be the time and place for macro assessments on the state of play between the two parties.

Here however, I intend to offer my very own, partial assessments on the micro side, what I can glimpse from some local council situations based on my own, no doubt partial and incomplete knowledge of the situation at ground level.

This round of local council elections is riveting because it offers some keen battles in which a majority on one side can be overturned, especially where PN is involved.

The best example is, of course, Mosta, the largest locality in Malta and one which used to be solidly on the PN side until that was overturned by Labour some elections back. Then, the last time round, following a disastrous term by the then PL mayor, the PL still got the majority of votes but such was the dispersion among PL voters that PN won the locality on the strength of the ensuing counts.

Here, however, a nemesis seems to have struck the PN. The rather good showing by the PN mayor was tempered by the fact she decided to call it a day.

Then disaster struck. The mayor had a Watergate-type of break-in at the office and a key report was reported stolen. It, or a copy of it, then surfaced when a PL councillor was shown brandishing it in a TV debate.

Concurrently, a storm of allegations began to be made against the mayor claiming that the report on the state of streets in the locality (and, having lived there for two years I can vouch for this, the streets are a disaster) and presumably thus which streets had to be redone, was carried out by the husband of the mayor, who is an architect.

The mayor promptly replied this report did not cost money, and she had been very open on the report not just with the council but also with the government department.

The vote yesterday can thus be read as the people's judgement on the mayor's work. She in turn compounded this by being very present at every event of the campaign whereas, having made it clear that she would not be a candidate, maybe she should have made way for the rest.

On the side of the PN core voters, there is, of course, former parliamentary secretary Edwin Vassallo who should have been in Parliament were it not for the notorious mistake during vote counting. Edwin is as hardcore as they come, and has remained steadfast to the old PN motto of Religio et Patria, apart from, for example, being one of the people who carried the Rxoxt statue at Easter (although not the one who dropped the statue).

The end result is that the PN was asking voters to go back to the values of the past instead of moving ahead with the values PN is trying to inculcate today, even through opening up to non-sectarian values. Maybe there are among the PN candidates those who reflect the new PN but I wouldn't know.

Next, the next big and knife-edge council - St Paul's Bay. Again, this is a traditional PN locality which last time switched to PL with disastrous results. The first mayor left, and the new one has gone for last minute patching of roads done even at night on the eve of the election.

St Paul's Bay, however, has changed from the PN fortress it used to be. What used to be a holiday resort has become home to many people from different countries. The schoolchildren speak a record amount of languages but somehow, as children do, they get on well together. Former minister Censu Galea has studied the phenomenon in a university thesis he has written.

However, even here I think PN has not really responded to the new demographics, except for in the case of one non-PN core candidate. Other than that, there is (I will be speaking about such a trend with regards to another locality) the beginning of a dynasty which some voters accept but others don't.

The next two localities I happen to know quite well.

Gzira used to be a tentative PN and had PN mayors in the past but switched to Labour some elections back. Here the PN campaign was a rather messy one with one candidate actually withdrawing when his name was already on the ballot paper. Another candidate has become notorious for his brash methods. Again, there is no candidate that can be said to reflect the new PN. Labour, on the other hand, has a solid team with no prima donnas but many hard workers. I predict this locality to remain PL.

Lastly is Hamrun, where I was born. There was a time when Hamrun had a PN mayor, now dead, but since then, for many terms, Hamrun has been under Labour.

This past term has been a rather disastrous one, and that is PL voters speaking. However, Labour has come up with a young candidate who has ironically promised change. He is young and well-meaning and I predict he will be the new mayor, as he deserves to be. As for the PN, here once again the candidates are more widely known for their affiliations to well-known figures - one is a descendant of a PN grandee who recently died, while the others are widely linked to one or other of the PN MPs and/or band clubs (which in the Hamrun case is the one and only band club that PN voters support).

Obviously, there are other localities each with own peculiar situations, so this is by no means an overall assessment. I predict, however, another trouncing for the PN party and its leader. There is much to say about the way the party is going about its actions and campaigning. The party has not really understood the reasons for Joseph Muscat's enduring popularity and why time and again voters choose him and his party despite everything PN throws at him. The PN focuses its own issues but seems to overlook what other people consider to be the real issues, which are mainly bread and butter and employment issues - areas where the PL is doing well.

This does not mean that in case of an as yet hypothetical defeat, the PN must fall into despair and/or change its leader. On the contrary, seeing the virulence of the PL attack and the shameless use of the much maligned (by the PL) predecessor at the interconnector inauguration, that can mean only one thing - the PL would very much like Simon Busuttil to disappear.

But just as the trouncing in the MEP elections enabled Dr Busuttil to undertake changes that would have been unthinkable a year ago, so too must he now understand there is still a long way, a very long way, to go before PN can present itself to the electorate with a modicum of credibility.

The Giovanna Debono issue in Gozo is, to my mind, not really linked to a locality issue but, rather, to the overarching theme of what went on in the last PN term.

Dr Busuttil might think he has climbed up a very hard slope but the hardest bit of the climb still lies ahead.

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