We are fast approaching election day, with all the buzz that it brings with it. Now that the date has been announced, the countdown has started.

All elections are unique. They are all held in different political and social circumstances, many of which are the key factors that push the so-called floating voters to choose their preference. A survey recently showed that around 17 per cent of Malta’s voters can be considered as shifting in between parties depending on what is going on at the time. The rest prefer to stick to their party of origin.

The election on 26 March will be the first in which people as young as 16 will be able to vote for their preferred candidate and/or party. We have already seen this in local council and European Parliament elections in 2019.

It will also be an election in which a gender-balance mechanism will be used to ensure a greater representation of women in the House of Representatives, which will probably lead to the highest number of MPs ever taking up their seat when Parliament is reconvened after the election. So far, the record is 69, which is already too high for a country of 500,000. Now we will get more.

But the 2022 election will be unique for other matters.

History will remember it as the election that saw one party which has been in government for nine years and needs to be pushed aside, and the other party which has been in opposition for nine years and is still not prepared to take over.

We are between the proverbial rock and a very hard place.

Surveys

The surveys continue to show that Labour is heading for another comfortable victory, which would be the third in a row.

The question remains the margin that will separate the two parties.

In 2017, the difference between the PL and PN was 35,280 votes, slightly higher than the 35,107 gap that was registered in 2013. Labourites like to argue that in 2017 the PL won with 40,000 more votes, seeing that the PN’s tally included around 4,000 preferences for Partit Demokratiku candidates, who formed part of a coalition with the PN.

Surveys carried out in the past months indicate that the Labour Party could win with an even bigger margin. The Nationalists hope that, even if a defeat is inevitable, seeing a reduction in Labour’s advantage would be a sign of hope.

With the inclusion of more voters – both because people in the 16-17 age group will be added to the list of voters for the first time, and also because of the population increase – Labour could edge closer, if not surpass, the target of winning 200,000 first count preferences. Last time round, it garnered 170,976 votes.

For the same reasons, the PN is also expected to increase its share, compared to the 135,696 votes it obtained in 2017. Whether it will be able to eat into Labour’s lead is another matter. One also has to consider the PD factor in the equation. The PD is no longer as relevant as it was with Marlene and Godfrey Farrugia in the fray (and has since joined AD to form one party). There are arguments that the Farrugia couple picked up many votes from traditional Nationalists, but whether these will return to the PN remains to be seen.

Labour Party

In office for nine years, the Labour Party has brought about several changes which have pleased the liberal section of the electorate. Civil rights have been given great attention by Labour, with the most recent addition being the recreational cannabis legislation. From an economic point of view, Malta has managed to withstand the currents, not least during the Covid-19 pandemic. Most of the decisions taken to deal with the virus crisis were appropriate, with the government being able to juggle between the medical requirements and the protection of the economy. We are still to emerge from the pandemic, and one has to see how the long it will take for us to recover in full. But, all in all, the government has passed this test.

It is in matters of rule of law, good governance, nepotism, meritocracy and impunity that the Labour Party has failed miserably. The way it protected its own, even when they were manifestly in the wrong, led to a laissez-faire attitude that permeated to all levels of society, with the man in the street starting to expect to get away with anything, given that others in the higher rungs were never punished for wrongdoing.

Labour’s lack of action earned us unprecedented titles, such as having an outgoing Prime Minister – Joseph Muscat – named man of the year for organised crime and corruption by an international consortium of investigate journalists and, later, with Malta being grey-listed by the Financial Action Task Force. Both are big blemishes on the country’s reputation.

More and more stories are emerging of people who are close to ministers and the PL who have been given jobs with lucrative financial packages. Before the 2013 election, the PL promised meritocracy, but this pledge was not fulfilled.

Allegations of corruption have emerged on a regular basis, and many of them still hang on our heads. The PL has been unable, or perhaps unwilling, to tackle the matter head-on.

Some of our institutions function properly, but their powers are too limited and often their good work is either ignored or finds a brick wall, particularly when their reports end up before the House of Representatives, which often acts as a dampener. With the government side at times defending the indefensible, Labour lost many opportunities to show that it really means business when it says it wants more discipline.

What is worse is that, when institutions work, they often come under attack by both Labour exponents and even government officials. This makes one wonder whether the PL wants the institutions to work.

Other institutions failed – and continue to fail – to perform their duties properly and appropriately. This enabled the flourishing of a culture of impunity, one which caught the eye of the international community that is demanding that Malta raises the bar in its fight against corruption and money laundering.

Too many Labour exponents have been caught in scandals that have rocked the nation, on a regular basis, again proving that the “anything goes” mentality was used and abused. Too often, too, their misbehaviour went unpunished.

The golden passports scheme continues to put us in bad light, and the Ukraine crisis places it under the international microscope even more.

For all this, the Labour Party should be sent to the Opposition benches.

Nationalist Party

The problem is that the Nationalist Party is still too weak to be perceived as a valid alternative to a third successive Labour administration.

In spite of spending the last nine years in Opposition, the PN has failed to regenerate itself. It has seen three leaders taking over after Lawrence Gonzi resigned following the 2013 election, and none of them has been able to come across as the one that instils the right confidence. Simon Busuttil led the party to an even bigger defeat in 2017, and both Adrian Delia and Bernard Grech have not lifted the party from those depths, at least from the results of surveys.

The internal strife that was very much in the open during the Adrian Delia leadership may no longer be so much in the public eye, but every now and then it still reaches the surface to show that the party has not healed. The fact that three MPs chose to withdraw their candidacy on the first day of the campaign exposes a party with open wounds. A fourth, Claudio Grech, also pulled out but remains close to the leadership.

The party’s financial struggles have grabbed headlines time and time again, and a party which cannot manage its own coffers is not seen as being capable of running the country, especially at a time of economic crisis that the pandemic has brought.

MPs who were part of the Gonzi Cabinet which lost the 2013 election are still the party’s main elements, and are still very much in control in spite of the second drubbing received in 2017 and suggestions that the party will never recover while they are still holding so much power in the corridors of Pieta.

The worst part is that newer, fresher candidates with no baggage have been hard to find, and some of the few who showed promise and were willing to give it a try gave up when they realised that it was impossible for them to survive in the shark tank.

The PN has also been caught in making contradictory statements too often in this second half of the legislature, and this gives the idea that the party is lacking the direction that it needs to be considered as being of government material.

The tabling of 12 bills on the rule of law was a splendid idea, one that deserved to be given more importance by the government, but it is not enough. The relevance of the party will also continue to dwindle if it holds activities just for the sake of saying something, rather than have something to say.

The PN is still not in a position to take on the mantle of the government.

Smaller parties

The number of small parties seems to increase between one election and another, but they are too weak to cause any significant damage to the two bigger parties.

The part of the electorate that gives its vote to candidates who are not on the PL and PN list is small. Given the option, voters would rather not exercise their right to vote than to put the number one next to a name representing a third party.

With Labour undeserving of a third term, the PN still unprepared and an insignificant batch of small parties, voters who think before they cast their vote have a hard nut to crack.

Whatever the outcome, it does not look good for Malta.