The last date for the election to be held on 26 March is tomorrow, 21 February. Will he or won’t he?
I still have my doubts. 26 March is just one week before the Pope arrives on his visit. And popes hate to find themselves in the middle of an election campaign.
On the other hand just like a plane gets regular signals on the altitude so too we have been getting regular signals the election is approaching. Parliament has gone through the matters that need approval while the end of that tiresome business like the interrogation of Konrad Mizzi will bring sighs of relief on the government side and of anger on those who want justice to triumph at last.
As if to contribute to the resumption of normalcy, the virus is abating and the restrictions are being lifted. So public meetings have resumed in preparation for the last weeks of the campaign.
The parties are finalizing the final logistic details which in the case of Malta are obsessively minute before the unrolling of the campaign.
And, most importantly, the grand lines of the campaign have already been drawn up.
The survey results are all there for people to see and they show in the last results a preponderance of support for Abela however with a big segment of Don’t Knows or Won’t Says.
They also show that support for the Opposition is rising but at a slower rate than the leaders of the PN would want.
All that’s left, we might say, is the colour and the noise of Malta’s unique election campaign.
The past week has shown tension rising by more than a notch and this time the two leaders are on the front lines. Bernard Grech kicked if off when he claimed that a drone was buzzing around his house. This was denied by Robert Abela who however noted Grech has a swimming pool and asked how could he afford it on his salary. And how could Abela know what is inside Grech’s house?
This reflected the controversies of the past weeks regarding Abela’s enormous retainerships before he became premier. And related controversies regarding his yacht and his properties. Then Maltatoday discovered you could see Bernard Grech in his home (and in shorts) on Google Earth. No need for drones, it seems.
While scandals continued to erupt concerning members of Cabinet – no longer past members such as Konrad Mizzi, Chris Cardona and Justyne Caruana, new allegations surfaced regarding present Cabinet members Clayton Bartolo and Anton Refalo (The Shift).
Is there any one that is unblemished?
The Opposition has a field day whenever such stories emerge but still the people at large seem unconcerned and are persuaded by the pro-government media that much the same thing happened when ‘the other side' was on top.
The Opposition might argue that people are self-centred or care only about material things but time and again one is drawn back to events that happened when Gonzi was PM etc. People have not forgotten and hurts still rankle. And the expressions of regret are too soft to be believed. The fact itself that so many of the people around the 2008 administration are still around and still occupy key posts does not Inspire confidence and trust.
When the results are in, will the party regret not having turfed people out sooner? Or does it have to be an electoral defeat to do what the party itself shied off from doing?
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