4:1
Labour's four musketeers
The reliable indications are that in the EP elections, Labour candidates will take four seats and a Nationalist candidate the other one.
Simon Busuttil has now come out to sound a warning. The Nationalist Party will struggle to gain a second seat, he said at the PN’s general council meeting. He urged those present to communicate the fact that the record of the two Nationalist MEPs has been so much better than that of the three Labour MEPs put together.
Well, I’ve no doubt about that.
Busuttil said that people should ask themselves: would it be good for Malta if the Nationalists have only two MEPS, or worse still, just one? I think he answered his own question. If two Nationalist MEPs have spent the last five years doing much more than three Labour MEPs, and with better results, then there’s no harm done if the same scenario is repeated for the next five years – though of course, it all depends on who those MEPs turn out to be.
I must say that I’m not over-exercised by the prospect of a 4:1 result in our European Parliament elections, but rather the opposite. It is absolutely essential for people to be able to let off steam, and the most useful purpose of elections such as these is to serve as a pressure-valve. Local council elections serve the same purpose.
If people release their anger in the European Parliament elections, many of them are less likely to release it in other ways, including a ‘cut off my nose to spite my face’ vote in the far more meaningful general elections.
Labour has a fabulously successful track record in meaningless elections like local councils and the European Parliament. But where it counts most, it doesn’t. I see a vital link between the two, and believe them to be correlated. Simon Busuttil probably does not agree. Others think it is a sign that people are inclined to vote Labour, but feel unable to do so in a general election. I don’t see it that way at all.
My view is that many people feel free to vote for the individual rather than the party in a European Parliament election, and that many others simply think it a very useful means of communicating a message of protest. It doesn’t mean they are going to do the same in a general election, and now that we have five years of hindsight, we can see this clearly. Arnold Cassola’s 20,000 EP election votes meant nothing in the general election four years later, and AD has more or less disappeared. Labour won three EP seats, lost the general election, and is now led by a jackass.
For all I give a damn, Labour can take five seats. That’s not what counts, and Labour would trade them all in to erase the humiliation of having won just one general election since 1976, and what’s more, one which led to the unmitigated disaster of Sant’s 22-month government. For heaven’s sake let Labour make merry with its three or four EP seats. By the time 2013 rolls round, the party will have had just one general election win to crow about in 37 years.
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This is scaremongering to the detriment of Arnold Cassola. It is impossible for PL to elect four candidates. Do the maths.
[Daphne – Cassola is not going to repeat his performance of 2004. AD will have to field Astrid Vella to repeat that performance.]
Yes of course Cassola will not do any better, but that’s not my point is it? To say PL could get 4 seats of 5 is ridiculous.
[Daphne – Why?]
My answer is simple: the maths does not add up. It is you who have to explain for you are the ones who are promoting the idea – you and Simon, that is.
[Daphne – Well, PN polls do tend to be more realistic than Labour polls or AD speculation, always bearing in mind that they are a snapshot of the moment and cannot be projected into June.]
Kev is right and I’ll explain why. In the last election Nationalists and Labour clearly gained two quotas each. The last candidates to be elected — Louis Grech — was elected without a quota.
The three-way race for the fifth and final seat was very close: Joanna Drake was only 2,000 votes behind Arnold Cassola and, had she held on until the final count, she would have benefited of many of Casa’s 12,000 vote surplus not to mention quite a few of Cassola’s.
For Labour to gain a four seat it should first strengthen its third seat before it starts working its way to the fourth. And to get there it needs close to two thirds of the vote, improving its performance by some 20 percentage points.
The Nationalists’ ambitions for this election need not be sky high: the two seats are practically assured and they only need that they have an equivocal claim to the sixth MEP to be elected if and when the Lisbon Treaty comes into effect.
Usual caveat: this is based on the last EP election result and not on recent polling data.
[Daphne – The situation has changed greatly since then.]
It’s so obvious Fausto – but see, they’re playing games. Not even Daphne has much to say about it. The situation has changed – yes, with the weather.
Fausto, if kev’s wife has her way, the Lisbon treaty will never come into effect.
Baxxter, that’s not the case at all. Read the last paragraph here: http://www.sharon4malta.com/uploads/file/ad-4-MT-en.pdf
U ija, Nice, Lisbon, Croatia… Jigifieri Sharon favur li l-Kroazja tidhol fl-EU? Favur l-integrazzjoni ta’ iktar pajjizi vittmi f’dan il-federal superstate? Faith and begob, ma nafx x’naqbad nghidlek, Kevin. Qiskom id-David Copperfield tal-politika intom it-tnejn – l-illuzjonista, mhux l-iehor.
@Baxxter – “U ija, Nice, Lisbon, Croatia… Jigifieri Sharon favur li l-Kroazja tidhol fl-EU? Favur l-integrazzjoni ta’ iktar pajjizi vittmi f’dan il-federal superstate? Faith and begob, ma nafx x’naqbad nghidlek, Kevin. Qiskom id-David Copperfield tal-politika intom it-tnejn – l-illuzjonista, mhux l-iehor.”
Is that your best straw, Baxxter? Whether I want Croatia to join is highly irrelevant. Just keep to Copperfield and you’ll make more sense.
“Whether I want Croatia to join is highly irrelevant”
Oh, so have Kev and Sha now morphed?
If Kev Ellul Bonici’s wife had her way a few years ago, we would not even be discussing MEP elections. U xorta ghandha l-wicc tohrog ghall-elezzjonijiet tal-MEPs.
Veru Amanda, l-Emmipeez suppost Europhiles biss ikunu ghax il-Pirlament Arjupej ghal tal-IVA biss qieghed. Ghidilha, Mrs Mallia, ghax int taf.
And you think YOU make sense? Or your wife? Five years ago she was shedding tears imploring us not to join the EU. Today she’s crusading for the sixth seat. Hope she gets elected, so she’ll be sucked into the superstate’s evil epicentre and disappear forever.
Baxxter, no one is crusading for the 6th seat. You are being informed of an important fact: the Lammassoure-Severin report, agreed by the European Parliament in October 2007, does not have to be tied to the Lisbon treaty. It could have been agreed in Council and ratified as an amendment to the current treaties. If Lisbon fails definitively, then there’s the Croatia Accession treaty in 2010. Did you know that? No, as many others who have blabbering about ‘losing the sixth seat if Lisbon fails’.
Be informed, man! What’s with you? Too young?
” urged those present to communicate the fact that the record of the two Nationalist MEPs has been so much better than that of the three Labour MEPs put together”
Erm… is there anything noteworthy that Mr. Casa has accomplished in his tenure of MEP?
Personally, I won’t be voting come June – I honestly couldn’t care less which buffoon shall allegedly represent my interests in the EP.
I long to see Jason’s sparkling grin from behind the press conference desk…..that is, if they let him sit there. Who’s going to guess what new phrase he’ll coin to describe Gonzi. Surely he won’t use ‘serial loser’ again.
4-1 is next to impossible. The 2 main parties, according to latest polls, are very close. I think AD can elect one seat.
[Daphne – Were these Jason Micallef’s polls, by any chance? Or Harry Vassallo’s?]
No, D Ellul, Daphne is implying that the PN polls show a 4 – 1 “defeat”. But she does not seem to be convinced herself, so there.
[Daphne – It’s not a matter of not being convinced, but of knowing, unlike Jason Micallef, that things can change drastically in a couple of months.]
I have many friends (PN supporters of course) who are a disillusioned and who do not want to vote this June. I have tried to remind them what happened in 2004, but they are adamant about not voting, sort of to protest vote.
Maybe a word from you Daph, might do the trick.
[Daphne – No, because I share their view that these elections are not important, except as a protest mechanism.]
Just to further strengthen the point about the often frivolous reasoning behind people’s voting patterns, here’s my voting logic EU2009, partially tinged wth hdura :)
In 2004, I felt that the job had been done, we were in, and a good shaking up wouldn’t hurt the PN. So my options were to vote AD or not vote at all. (Vote MLP? what? tghid mhux hekk!). My problem with voting for AD, if nothing else, was that since Arnold had ‘lost’ his passport, he had moved from the ‘we’re clean, we’re not politicians’ paradigm to ‘we’re down and dirty like the stereotype’, and effectively ruled him out in my eyes. So I didn’t vote.
Which means that I effectively contributed towards electing people who had spent most of the last few years campaigning against membership.
I’m not about to do that again. I shall be voting for the PN candidates who were always in favour of EU membership, obviously excluding Vince Farrugia, of course.