Robert Abela is scraping the very bottom.  Faced with the devastating result of the latest Maltatoday survey on Gozitans' voting intentions, Abela was left clutching at straws during his speech at the recently inaugurated Gozo Aquatic Complex - well beyond timeline, and millions over budget.

Maltatoday revealed that the PN currently enjoys the support of 50.4% of Gozitan voters.  Labour languishes at a catastrophic 32%.  That's a massive lead for the PN. And that's despite having three Gozitan ministers in Abela's cabinet. No wonder Robert Abela was hysterical.

Abela was making the most ludicrous pledges to Gozitans to try and win them back.  "There will be no investigation into Gozo public sector workers," Abela promised, adding that "calls to look into abusive practices are an attack on workers". What drivel.  That's like claiming investigating burglaries is an attack on robbers.  Robert Abela has a duty to investigate abuse amongst government employees. Hard-working, dedicated civil servants are appalled at the utter lack of enforcement. They know that they need to work harder and longer to compensate for the abuse of a small privileged segment of public sector workers.  "When I saw the parliamentary question about the Gozitan workers.... I told them to forget it," Abela commented.

"Let me make this clear: to persecute and trample over Gozitan workers, first you'll have to get through us," Abela bragged. The Gozitans aren't stupid.  They know exactly what Abela means.  He's sending a message to those civil servants favoured by Labour who are allowed to skive, dodge their duties, and lump work onto their colleagues, that they will not be held responsible. The Gozitans know they can't trust Robert Abela.  They know exactly what Clint Camilleri is up to.  No wonder the swing against Labour is so massive.

And that's why Abela has completely lost his head. He's now calling PN MP Karol Aquilina the inquisitor. Labour's Sunday newspaper, Kulhadd, carried a caricature of Karol Aquilina wearing a monk's hood under the title - The Inquisitor Karol Aquilina. In desperation Labour defaults to its demonisation of its critics.  Eddie Fenech Adami was portrayed as a baby in his nappy, Daphne Caruana Galizia as the wicked witch, Karol Aquilina as the Inquisitor.

The irony was completely lost on the Prime Minister who delivered a speech publicly declaring that he's not willing to rein in the Gozo ministry's abuse specifically at that monument to incompetence and waste, the Gozo Aquatic Centre.

The Gozitans have watched their island being sold off to greedy developers who ruined Gozo while they funded Labour.  They resent Abela's rank hypocrisy - claiming that he's against high rise developments while turning Xlendi and now Marsalforn into multi-storey monstrosities casting long shadows over the once idyllic sea-side villages. They've witnessed the disgusting spectacle of a Gozo minister rewarding his friend and former work colleague, Architect Godwin Agius, with hundreds of thousands of euro of taxpayers' money for a single project.

What's surprising is not that Labour is lagging behind, but that it still enjoys 32% of the Gozitan vote. That is only due to the cultish strategies Labour deploys. Those present at Abela's speech, though few in number, truly believed him when he called Karol Aquilina the inquisitor. They completely believe him when he states that investigating abuse is an attack on Gozitan workers.

This is not political disagreement or partisan passion.  This is the complete abandonment of empirical reality in favour of whatever the dear leader proclaims to be true. Abela is a performance artist. He manages to convince people to believe what he says even when they are presented with incontrovertible facts and detailed evidence to the contrary. Even court judgements, conclusions of magisterial inquiries, European Central bank statements are not only ignored but discredited.  Labour's mantra is that any inconvenient revelations are fake news, the work of the establishment, the enemies of the country, the PN - and they're all lying.

A dwindling number of our population still chooses to believe the obvious lies of their prophet.  They abandon facts so completely that they continue to inhabit a parallel reality. And they believe it completely. Labour leaves no space for doubt about the Leader, no place for questioning or nuance.  The Leader is infallible, only he speaks the truth even when he contradicts himself and resorts to one U-turn after another.  The party is united. The Leader is a genius, he's working on the most historic budget ever.  Labour is pushing the propaganda that Abela's budget will be the best in history even before it's unveiled.  And Labour's loyal followers already believe it, wholeheartedly, deeply and with conviction - even though they haven't seen it yet.   They believe the Leader, ONE and PBS - all reinforcing the same message.  Everybody else is lying.

This is the danger we face.  Thousands of our fellow citizens are so thoroughly indoctrinated that they cannot distinguish between fantasy and reality, between democracy and autocracy, between integrity and dishonesty.  They're programmed to perceive any opposition to the Leader, no matter where it comes from, as an existential threat.  Any compromise is a betrayal, any fact that contradicts his claims is a conspiracy. Watch how Labour turned on Conrad Borg Manche', on John Attard Montalto, even on Evarist Bartolo simply because they expressed doubts or held a different view.

This is Labour's binary world - you are either with the Leader completely or you're the enemy. Changing that requires the extraction of members of the cult from their information bubble. It seems impossible to break the spell when the Leader controls ONE and the national broadcaster, when he's got at his disposal millions of taxpayers' money with which to fund a never-ending propaganda campaign - on the streets, on social media, even through the Opposition party's channel that accepts his advertising money.

But finally the cult is cracking.  No wonder Robert is rattled.  An almost 20% lead for the PN in Gozo cannot easily be brushed off. Those polls strengthen the hope that democracy will prove stronger than delusion.  Our own past provides further reassurance. Out of the violent repression of Labour's brutal 1980s, emerged a vibrant democratic nation that joined the European Union and embraced fundamental values and freedoms. Out of Labour's latest rotten mess, a new country will emerge.