Polls at the end of the campaign by and large yield the same figures of polls before the campaign started. The consistent results in surveys conducted by different analysts reinforce each other and the confidence that they are correct. Whether Robert Abela manages to increase the record gap over the PN that Joseph Muscat secured in 2017 remains perhaps the only open question.
What is hardly still debatable is that the party that formed a government found responsible for guaranteeing impunity for criminals to such an extent that the criminals thought they would get away with killing a journalist will be resoundingly confirmed in office. The prime minister caught profiting from a property swindle and using his big win to cover up for Russians lying to the government he runs will be resoundingly confirmed in office.
It’s tempting to sigh and grunt and say, ‘it’s all for nothing’. Depends on what you mean by “it”. If by it you mean the PN and its inability to dent Labour’s supremacy, you wouldn’t be too far wrong, except that you still need to keep things in perspective.
Just over two years ago the PN was polling below 20%, its worst approval ratings since they cleared the rubble from the ruins of the opera in Valletta. Having nearly digested itself in acid of its own making, the PN got over its indigestion quickly, produced an impressive, if perhaps excessive, electoral program and went through the unprecedented bother of working out how much it would cost.
They presented a cohort of new candidates, some of them distinctly appealing, shutting up the mantra that they’re a bunch of dinosaurs. And to the unholier than thou who accused the PN of being negative, the PN sent a stark response, striking the right balance between being critical of the government’s corruption and its failures and demonstrating the PN’s eligibility to be keen to do better.
The PN’s election campaign will not win PR or design awards, and it won’t be remembered for its glitziness generations from now. Its budget was modest, transparently so, and dwarfed by the belching behemoth of the Labour Party. But the PN’s campaign was effective. People still accusing the PN of internal divisions wilfully ignored the discipline in its presentation. People still accusing the PN of being vague on its own intentions are being stubborn rather than merely inobservant.
You can accuse the PN of flipflopping on hunting, passport selling, and reproductive rights. You can be unhappy with the offensive permanence of some of its candidates. You can be sceptical about how well the walls of the church will hold together once the election is over.
But you can’t say the PN has not put its best foot forward, overcome its eminently justified inferiority complex, and showed up on the appointed day presenting itself as an alternative.
The alternative will be rejected in favour of the Labour Party. I have argued on this blog in as much detail as I could put together reasons why the support enjoyed by Labour persists. I won’t repeat it all here because there’s another point I want to make.
No matter how many elections they win, no matter how great the majority support they enjoy is, no matter how loud they holler, and how tough they bully, the job of keeping Labour’s excesses in check does not end.
The agenda on Monday morning remains as full as it is today.
Robert Abela must not be allowed to avoid questions about his financial affairs for ever. Angelo Gafà cannot postpone for ever on delivering prosecutions on crimes of corruption we’ve seen the evidence of for years. John Dalli’s prosecution needs concluding. Keith Schembri and Konrad Mizzi need to answer for the Panama Papers and for the Electrogas debacle. Joseph Muscat must answer for the hospitals swindle.
Yorgen Fenech and the stooges charged for killing Daphne must be tried and sentenced. All those involved in plots to kill Daphne who are still at large must be arrested, charged, and tried.
We need to continue pushing for reforms to restore our democratic institutions to approach what they are supposed to exist for. We need to campaign for a reform of Parliament, of the prosecution service, of the police, of the anti-corruption agencies. We need to re-examine the electoral system, public broadcasting, and civic education on democracies. Damn it, we need to insist on the reversal of the pathological mediocrity in the education we give our children and the yawning gaps in the education that we deprive them of.
We need to empower local authorities, academia, students, and civil society and restore plurality in a democracy that today is the exclusive function of the dialectic between the will of the prime minister and the sabotage of his internal political enemies.
I don’t want to sound like those politicians campaigning on the eve of the election like they’re standing on the brink of a new dawn when the sun can be expected to rise swiftly and never set. If you’re even vaguely familiar with this blog, you know just how sceptical I am with the downward spin of our democracy. You will understand that that just because I say we must fight for these things, does not in any way mean I fancy our chances of obtaining them.
I know that giving up brings about the only certain scenario, the irrevocable eternity of a one-party tyranny, a renunciation of even our most basic rights, and the abandonment of our children to their fate.
The fact of the matter is after Sunday’s result, the work just goes on. It must.
In the meantime, before Monday comes, you just have this one thing to do. If it makes sense to you to campaign for pluralism and democracy, or at least to support it in your own way, even if your way is just grunting privately as you scroll your thumb over your iPhone, and you still do that despite the absence of any promises of success, then surely it must make sense for you to vote this Saturday and to do so by voting in the most effective manner possible to dent Labour’s supremacy.
On Saturday, stop whining and go do it. With your eyes on Monday morning.