Unless proven otherwise, I’m going to continue to work on the assumption that Labour have won today’s election. And I’m also going to work on the assumption that Labour have also been working on the assumption that they have won today’s election. All the polling pointed to that result so no other assumption is more reasonable.

Joe Sammut, that unmitigated idiot from Żurrieq whose two lonely brain cells got lost on their way to marriage counselling, delayed polling in Żurrieq this morning because a banner sporting his silly mug wearing his silly plastic smile was left hanging outside the polling station in breach of the 50 metre picket line rule.

He’s contested half a dozen general elections and he’s been holding court in that hovel across from the Żurrieq school for generations. This wasn’t some novice’s error. This was a stunt to get the Żrieraq to think of him as he’s lost in the sea of Labour Party candidates who are ever so slightly less useless than he is.

Joe Sammut has not emerged from 1985 yet. Most other candidates have. They can defy rules requiring them to stop campaigning a clear 31 hours before polling starts without the backlash of people waiting outside a polling station waiting for their mess to be cleaned up.

Online campaigning continued in earnest on Friday, the so-called day of reflection, and throughout polling day today. Actually, it intensified today. Labour Party sponsored ads on Facebook breached even the jaded bastions of my social media echo-chamber exhorting me to vote for them.

By noon, a sense of panic set in in Labour ranks. They didn’t like the numbers of the turnout and felt they needed to increase the pressure on the recalcitrants. People reported getting called by Labour call centres 3 or 4 times pushing them to vote.

In the meantime, Tony Zarb, ever happy to be the first volunteer to deliver some black ops fake news on behalf of his regime, ran this piece of bullshit.

It’s wrong on so many levels. First, why should someone who was considering not voting Labour be persuaded to change their minds because not voting for Labour could have the effect of getting Joseph Muscat arrested? In other words why does someone who to begin with does not care, start caring because Tony Zarb tells them Joseph Muscat desperately needs them to?

Also, it obviously isn’t true. The “sorsi nfurmata” are fumes of delusion and deceit.

What’s worse is this is a manifest breach of the law. It is a lie, wrapped in the trappings of partisan propaganda, on one of two days every five years where this sort of daily drivel is not allowed. If anyone needs arresting now, that’s Tony Zarb. Joseph Muscat can wait till Monday.

The panic stricken Tony Zarb wasn’t enough. Jean Claude Micallef switched on his Facebook reporting from the field putting on his mock frontline reporter dodging bombs in Mariupol act. He was all glum. ‘It’s not looking good,’ he said. But his audience could fix it, he said. They could go out and vote Labour in the time left to them.

The please, please, please, you must vote Labour line was taken up by the Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, no less. He implicitly admitted “shock” at Labour HQ at the low turnout.

Now it’s important to understand that this wasn’t some public soul searching after polling closed. This was messaging half way through polling day. Which means that this was a manifest effort to influence voter behaviour even as the actual voting was going on. The law does not allow this.

And you can understand why. If you’re sitting for an exam you’re allowed, expected even, to read your books and your notes and your trick mnemonics right up to the beginning of exam time. But when the exam starts opening your notes amounts to cheating.

You’re expected to make your case vehemently in front of a judge. Until the hearing ends. But while she’s deliberating in her chambers it’s totally out of order to even whisper in her ear.

Today voters are the examiners, the judges, who have been bombarded with 5 years of campaigning that for this election started all the way back in June 2017, only kicking up a higher gear over the last 5 weeks. It should, it must be enough.

Labour was frantic today, breaking rules and laws, harassing voters when the law requires them to leave voters well alone to live out with some serenity the one day in a five year cycle when they are free to make up their own minds rather than be told by One TV how to think and whom to hate. Or should be.

The irony of it all is that based on the assumption this piece opened up with, Labour is not breaking these laws because it fears losing the election. All this bullying and harassment is out of frustration that they just might not be able to rattle “erbgħin elf” followed by a row of emoji lemons every time they run out of arguments, which is usually whenever even the flimsiest of argument is brought to contradict their megalomania.

Election Day is a bit like midnight on the 31st of December. Is it the end of the last term or the beginning of the new one? On this Election Day, Labour finishes its term just as it has lived it, ignoring the law, acting in contempt of it, whenever it suits them to consolidate their power. If today was the start of Labour’s third term, they have started as they mean to go on.