Winning the election is not enough for people who want more than political power. People who want to get away with their crimes need to get rid of the people they perceive as their enemies.

The 2017 playbook crafted by Keith Schembri is being played out again. In 2017 the mission was to get rid of Simon Busuttil and Daphne Caruana Galizia. I hesitate to place myself in a comparison with either of those two because outside the paranoia of Joseph Muscat, Yorgen Fenech, Konrad Mizzi, Chris Cardona, Robert Abela and so on, I’m nowhere near as effective. But I am on their list and the heat is being turned up.

But though I was the only journalist, I wasn’t alone on their billboard of targets.

Consider what’s happening right now to Karol Aquilina and Jason Azzopardi. Neither one did well enough to be elected last Sunday but both contested districts where one of the electees has vacated a seat because they were elected from two districts.

The two former MPs and PN candidates are being placed under enormous pressure to back out of the “casual election”. The pressure they might care about is coming from PN people writing on social media, parroting the line started by Labour trolls, that Azzopardi and Aquilina should take the hint and back out of the casual election because “the people have spoken”.

The “people”, apparently, don’t want any MP who has spoken out against corruption and for justice for Daphne Caruana Galizia because that’s “negative”.

Yes, you ignoramuses, the people have spoken. That is what a casual election seeks to find out, what the fuck they’ve said. And what you’re trying to do by putting pressure on two candidates that are already in voting preferences expressed by the people just last Saturday is ignore what the people have said.

The ‘you are an elitist’ line is really ramping up right now. Someone on Facebook posted a comment to contrast me with Mark Anthony Sammut because Mark Anthony Sammut “tifel tal-ħaddiema”. Who the hell do you think my parents are, the Duke and Duchess of Ħal Mula?

In any case, there are elites I have no shame in belonging to because it seems that a basic appreciation of the electoral system is a rare quality.

Casual elections are not a bloody bonus round on Who Wants to be a Millionaire? All casual elections do is continue the counting of the same ballot sheets cast just last Saturday. The only reason this has to happen is because candidates are allowed to contest two districts but no bum can sit on two seats. If a candidate is elected by two districts they must betray the votes of one of those districts to represent the other. So, the votes cast for that candidate are pulled out to look at the next preferences the voters expressed and elect their choice to Parliament.

This has been happening in this country for over a century. It is not some obscure process no one ever heard of. So, what the fuck is this fuss about?

In our system the people don’t only say who their favourite candidate is, but they also get the chance to express who their second, third, fourth preferred candidate is, and so on until they run out of preferences. If the candidate vacating the seat did not contest, the next in line in the order of preference would have been elected by Sunday night.

This is just part of the process. If Aquilina and Azzopardi were to succumb to pressure, and if it was their turn to be elected (they cannot know for sure and Azzopardi in particular starts out rather far from the target), then backing out at this point would have the opposite effect of fulfilling voters’ desires. It would simply have the consequence of electing candidates that less people voted for!

Here’s Malta Daily, whatever it is and whoever it is that controls it and might be motivated to add to the pressure on Aquilina and Azzopardi to back out, speaking of a “public backlash” because Azzopardi and Aquilina said they would keep their name in while the next voter preferences are counted.

The burden is put on them to live up to whatever “public backlash” is being pumped up by people who want them out, when the only democratic interpretation of the public’s view on the matter (rather than some half-arsed online poll) is written right there on those ballot sheets cast in their districts just last Saturday.

You know what this is? This is an attempt to bully political candidates into withdrawing from an election that has already been completed. This is the worst breach of basic Parliamentary privilege imaginable. That privilege belongs to voters who have every right to have the preferences they expressed last Saturday honoured in the choice of MPs elected.

Now if you want to say that it is elitist to insist that the preferences expressed by people on the ballot sheet should be reflected in the result, then you must insist that even the most basic appreciation of democracy is elitist. And then I don’t care anymore what you think. I really don’t. Because you’re just a puppet in the hands of criminals who unsatisfied with capturing our democracy to the point of neutralising the opposition now resort to your naive complicity to eliminate their enemies altogether.