Clifford, I do not see it as a “Labour Dream” but more of a “Labour Nightmare”
Think about it properly.

PN split? Dream on, Labour.

This is setting up a new party is a fascinating idea which has been doing the rounds of offices and kazini and such. For there to be “disgruntled” PN voters, they would have to have been “gruntled” in the first place.

Local council election results, which have been consistent since 1993 or whenever it was, should give you a clue. PN voters want LESS party, not more. Not another party.

Silvio makes the mistake of thinking that those who vote PN support PN. A good fraction of them don’t. That’s at least 11% of the electorate who vote PN but are not core voters.

We just want decent people in government who’ll let us get on with our lives, not lead us by the hand to the Land of Plenty which is the mantra of both parties.

Joseph Muscat has his lifink waych. Lawrence Gonzi has his social handouts. To hear them speak you’d think we were all god-fearing factory employees, living on the poverty line, waiting for that government cheque to come through the door of our government flat.

Why? Is it just because the LP won by 150 votes? The norm is that the LP wins the local councils elections but looses the most important battle of all, the general elections.

Good for you. I hope you can persuade your family to do so as well.

[Daphne – Silvio, my point was that it is ALSO A MESSAGE TO LABOUR: ‘See, we didn’t want to vote PN as we usually do, but we didn’t want to vote for your party either.’ And vice versa. It is this particular aspect which merits analysis by BOTH PARTIES.]

I see the message as:

“We will never vote Labour, but on the other hand, we will not vote for the P.N.as long as it is what it is.”

Could be that it is time to have another Nationalist Party, which will manage to attract the dissgruntled P.N. supporters.

This new splinter party will be sure to gather the support of the 22000 voters (yes correct, we lost 11,000 from half of the country, which was always considered as P.N.
This is the right time for Dalli to make his move.

[Daphne – Surely you are not serious. Dalli makes his move and thousands of people like me leave in droves. You have no idea, perhaps, how he is truly perceived.]

The problem I see is that if a new Nationalist Party is set up, the thing that Gonzi would undoubtedly do, is call an early election,so that the new party will not have enough time to gather support.

[Daphne – Setting up a new party is something Labour needs to do, Silvio, not the Nationalist Party. The Nationalist Party just needs to remember that it once understood perfectly the mentality of that 10% of the Maltese population who are completely different from the other 90%, tend to live in areas where there was a high number of voter abstentions, and are the ones who in every election make the difference to the party’s fortunes. People like that now feel they no longer exist in the eyes of the political parties, that they are emarginated freaks or strangers in their own land amid the unstoppable rise of naff culture, naff values and naff thinking. It’s too much. The Nationalist Party could never in a million years get away with somebody like Joseph Muscat as a leader. It should ask itself why. The answer is not that its councillors who choose the leader have better taste than Labour delegates, but that supporters of the Nationalist Party would never tolerate it and would leave in droves. The ‘persona’ of the two politicians being touted by PN supporters themselves as possible successors to Dr Gonzi – Simon Busuttil and Mario de Marco – should tell you all you need to know about which PN supporters are feeling uncatered for. Lots of people I know switch through the Maltese TV channels on a Sunday night, for instance, and can’t relate to any of it. It is from a different culture that they know exists but which is completely alien to them even though it’s in the same tiny island: Arani Issa (Super One), Min Imissu (TVM), and on NET a soap opera featuring all the usual suspects, crass acting, a terrible story-line and Mary Spiteri as the lead character who breaks out into song during quiet moments in her office.]

Of course I do not expect the new party to win the next election, but I am sure it will have enough say in our next government, to press for the necessary changes, and change of faces, that are the only salvation for the P.N.

I believe that Matthew’s father is a dentist but that is all the connection there is with JPO.

Your typical city would have one band club. Imagine.