Surveys continue to show that Maltese voters will give the Labour Party another comfortable victory in Saturday’s election. It would be the third in a row.

And yet Prime Minister Robert Abela continues to push for more, at times also coming up with bizarre statements such as the one he made on Monday, when he said that the Nationalist Party is urging people not to vote.

His was an attempt to instil some fear in the Labour voters, whom he has encouraged, time and again, to exercise their right to choose the party they want to govern Malta.

This is all a result of Abela’s own fear – that he will not be able to win his own personal battle. Not the one against Nationalist Party leader Bernard Grech, which he knows he will win handsomely, but the one against his predecessor Joseph Muscat.

Muscat has won two general elections with a massive 35,000+ vote margin, and Abela wants to at least emulate that, if not make it better.

He knows that Muscat remains an icon for Labourites, in spite of his track record and shameful resignation. He knows that Muscat will always be more loved than he (Abela) is, and that given the chance most Labourites would choose to have him (Muscat) back as their leader.

And so he is trying his best to get that result which would put him on a higher pedestal, at least in terms of numbers. He cannot take Muscat’s place in the hearts of Labourites, but by beating him Abela can always claim that he did better.

It is only by achieving this target that he would have solidified his grip, and by doing so grabbing more power, both as party leader and prime minister. If he does not and if, in particular, Labour’s advantage is cut down substantially he will find himself in a weaker position.

He has even chosen to contest the same electoral districts Muscat did in the last election in 2017 – the second and the fifth. He gave up his home district, the sixth, which had elected him to Parliament for the first time five years ago, in a bid to compare himself directly with his predecessor. In the last election, Muscat had amassed 14,674 and 12,886 votes from the two districts he contested, a total of 27,560.

Abela wants to beat that too, and this is why he continues to encourage Labourites to vote. He does not say it, but the headlines he will look out for after the election are not the ones in which it is said that Labour won, but that he (Abela) has obtained a bigger victory than Muscat’s two, and that he (Abela) picked up more votes than Muscat did.

If it all happens, that is. Otherwise, Abela will not like the headlines if he would not have managed to either win the overall election with a bigger margin, or that he failed to gather more personal votes than Muscat. Or both.