It’s time to think about what the numbers mean
In 2008 the Nationalist Party got 49.3% of the vote, Labour got 48.8% and AD got 1.3%.
More votes for AD – because they NEVER come from Laburisti and ALWAYS from people who prefer the PN – would have landed us with Alfred Sant as Prime Minister and he would still be Prime Minister today.
Yesterday’s meaning in Dingli Street would not have been addressed by the prime minister, but by the leader of the Opposition. On Saturday, we would be voting to vote Sant out and not to keep Joseph out.
I hate to think what Malta would be like today if that had happened – all because some people think that voting is an exercise in self-indulgence or democratic w**king, rather than a vote for a specific outcome (the choice of the best party to govern) and a vote for the best interests of Malta.
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Every new day finds me with less hope for a PN victory. I read the comments board on timesofmalta.com, and it’s all so saddening when you see how people sum up Gonzi’s efforts. I just wish this week is just a day long so we’ll get it over and done with. I hope I will be proven wrong.
Many thanks for keeping a smile on our faces with your blog.
[Daphne – The Times comments board is flooded with organised comments, so don’t take it as a true picture of reality. The aim is precisley to demoralise and to create an aura of negativity around what actually is a massive success story.]
The Times comments board is so much organised by the PL that I know for sure that one single person/elf of josephmuscat.com has more than one profile to post comments on timesofmalta.com.
So so true. The Laburisti have organized themselves into commenting on everything related to the electoral campaign.
It does make me feel disheartened, but that is their aim, and we have to keep hope till next Saturday.
Ignore the comments on timesofmalta.com Always the same bunch of people posting the same negative comments over and over EVEN when there is nothing negative to post about.
A story goes up and they swarm in, an army of pensonjanti, nisa tad-dar jiehdu brejk minn Fejsbuk, and Labour FZL elves.
Take J Brincat, Eddy Privitera and Victor Laiviera, three expired MLP die-hards aznd denizens of timesofmalta.com, always complaining about everything.
E-gi
When you see the comments board of the Times you will notice recurring names and the recitation of a mantra revolving around less jobs, destroyed economy, 500 increase in wages, poverty lines and electricity pricing.
It is a long and difficult week. I choose to believe that the Maltese aren’t stupid.
There are many things that Muscat has discounted that are working against MLP. Aside from the economics of it, the shrugging off of the ‘blokka silg’ episode as a mistake is enough to set many parents thinking.
I have significant reservations in entrusting my vote to someone who took it upon himself to decide whether a crime had been committed.
Muscat would have been more credible had he gone to the police immediately. To me it shows lack of respect for his own two girls. If he doesn’t have the courage to protect his own kids will he have the courage to protect my children? Where does he draw the line between career and fatherhood?
I would never ever do protect pushers even if it were to cost me my career. My cousin (and a few friends) died from drug overdose. I have friends in and out of rehab. One person is a living zombie who recognises none of his friends due to drug abuse. It is horrific and heart wrenching.
From my perspective, at least, the decision Muscat faced between reporting the incident to the authorities and keeping mum about it was a no brainer. Even if taken from his own pure self-interested opportunism he could have emerged better off had he gone to the police. That adds insult to injury: it shows he has absolutely no strategic foresight in his own affairs.
I would have thought that Mark Montebello woud have said something about this injustice perpetrated by Labour. He deals with enough drug addicts to know what the consequences of not reporting drugs are.
@maryanne
That’s because Mark Montebello is as Labour as they come.
Thanks to all for putting things back into perspective for me.
The numbers above will change. The generation before us is mostly gone. Our generation is practically the only one that remembers Labour in government.
Two new generations are voting this time round and they are voting for what they think will be a change and a leap into the new and “exciting”.
A Labour victory is a natural consequence of a 25 year Nationalist government. What I find unacceptable is how people my age who remember Karmenu Vella, Evarist, Leo and Co and are ok with giving them power yet again.
[Daphne – No, a Labour government is not a ‘natural consequence of 25 years of PN’. Aside from the fact that the PN government is elected every five years for five years, and not for 25 years, if it is a natural consequence of anything at all, it is a natural consequence of the very poor analytical and rational skills of a very great part of Maltese society. Whether this is due to education, upbringing, the way we live, the insular nature of the territory, is not for me to say, but it is a fact. Age or generation has absolutely nothing to do with it. I know plenty of people in their 20s who are able to make a factual analysis of Joseph Muscat and his Labour Party without reference to the 1980s. There is, in fact, no need to make reference to the 1980s because Joseph Muscat is frighteningly inadequate in himself. People with good insight find him deeply disturbing, whether they are 20 or 80.]
Last time I showed my 21 year-old son the video you put up some time ago of Alfred Sant addressing Labour’s meeting when he was on about ‘Goooooooooooooonzi’ this and ‘Goooooooooooonzi’ that.
He just couldn’t believe his ears, ‘My God, not even his own mother could have voted for this madman”, he said, “and how could Joseph not run a mile away from a party who had a lunatic for a leader unless he’s one too.’
and still.. and still.. he was voted into power… half of the electorate have a political blindfold.
I hate it when people say that the PN has been in government for 25 years. It hasn’t. The LP was elected in 1996, and it was due to the disastrous leadership that an early election was called.
This fact in itself should be an eye-opener to many. This is what the PL managed to do, when it was at the helm.
If the scenario you describe had occurred and Alfred Sant was our PM one thing would certainly be different. The incoming government would not have Eur1.2 BILLION in EU funds to spend. The sum would be closer to the Eur1.2 MILLION that Alfred Sant predicted we would get.
I ask L.Gatt: “How old are you?” I am 55 years old, and my generation is very much still around.
We all remember the dark dark days of the Mintoff era.
Karmenu Vella, Evarist, Leo and the remainder of the klikka were all a part of this era. Do we want them back again?
We have to look forward and not back. Bringing these people back into power unfortunately will make us look backward, and go backward.
Is this what we really want?
All you “cool Nationalists and gays” – is this what you really want?
Google the Mintoff era and read what happened and you can be your own judges. The problem is that Muscat has THE SAME PEOPLE in his party today.
Labour’s strategy proves your (and many others’) point.
If it were not so why did they hide most of their candidates?
I have only seen Manuel Mallia, Deborah Schembri and Owen Bonnici on television.
And although younger, Joseph has the same mentality. All that brainwashing from Nanna must be totally ingrained in his psyche.
I am 35. I was still young, but I remember the Dark Days well enough. I remember the savagery and the violence and fear.
I remember looking with longing at other countries. I remember the humiliation of being Maltese when going abroad (assuming one could afford to fly in the first place).
@ Cikka. I said the generation before us is gone – our parents, not us. I am younger than you but not by much.
I think that my comment was not clear. Of course we all remember Mintoff “e bella compagnia”. Of course, I find the sight of all them and their offspring revolting to say the least.
However, in my opinion, unfortunately many people in their twenties and thirties who are looking for “change” and who blame all that is wrong in their lives on the government are not put off by Labour as we are.
They have no recollection of how Labour governed the country then and how it will probably govern the country now.
Daphne, yes the government is voted in every five years but every ten brings a change of generation. Fifteen years ago all my grandparents still voted, my younger brother didn’t and my nephews were toddlers.
Today my grandparents are long gone, I have only one parent left, my brother and nephew both vote.
This time round there are two generations that did not experience Labour which are voting. After 25 years of, more or less, the same government, Labour winning the next election is not such an earthshattering victory as they are making it out to be.
They will win not because they have any sort of plan for Malta’s future or because they inspire trust or are forward thinking. They will win because what they profess and promise will win over an immature (and I am not referring to age here) voting public especially if that voting public has never experiences a Labour government and has therefore not comparison to make with the present Nationalist government.
I’m sorry if I pour further doom and gloom on everyone, but the “dark days” of MLP aren’t just the Mintoff years. They’re KMB’s. And Sant’s. And Joseph Muscat’s too. In fact, there have never been any bright days in MLP’s contribution to Malta.
As Adrian Edmondson put it:
“Slime in this ear, slime in the other ear, day in, day out, year in, year out. Don’t you ever yearn for change?”
That’s more than fifty years of darkness, ladies and gentlemen. Now go ahead and vote for another five years on top of that.
The real change we need is a change in the Labour party. And the only way to force that is to inflict an electoral defeat. Maybe. MAYBE, this time, they will change.
This is right. The Labour Party had two golden opportunities to change itself. Back in 1992 it preferred Sant to Spiteri and in 2008 Muscat to Abela.
In both cases everything was stage managed by the same people who are being mentioned in other comments and come from the Mintoff/KMB era so called golden days.
In fact. You are so very right. They should be concentrating on internal change. From top down.
We have been so forgiving and so accommodating that instead of maintaining our standards, there has been a general slipping of standards towards those favoured by PL perhaps as a result of pressure from those same PL expectations over the years.
Perhaps with a LP defeat, the demons of the past, the dinosaurs, the culture of state-dependent individual expectations and the brash arrogance will start to become history and no longer remain the live exposed nerve that it still is.
It would be interesting to observe the maturing of the electorate under a Nationalist Government over the next 5 years.
There are people such as Joseph who are neither here nor there (socially), who are neither young nor old, who are neither dumb nor intelligent, who have a twisted and prejudiced view of things, who simply say the wrong things all the time, fight for the wrong cause, bark up the wrong tree and consistently make the wrong decisions.
Malta’s electorate would finally mature under another NP term but regress irretrievably under Joseph & Co/ LP/ MLP.
It’s the crucial moment that ensures the ghosts are laid to rest and do not not ever attempt rise again from the ashes.
I’m looking forward to being able to give that live nerve its final root treatment session with my vote. Everyone voting NP would be throwing a shovel of dirt to finally bury that hateful damaging past, and its lying Mintoff puppet Joseph with it.
Since I am one who contributes a comment, now and again, to timesofmalta.com, and I tend to project a pro-PN view, I would point out that many a time I had to prod the editor to print my comment. Sometimes, my comment appears so late that it tended to be overlooked.
One should not take the number of contributions at face value. The content is more significant and when this provokes alarm bells, one should know which way to vote to counter the danger.
It is a pity that people my age – 87 – do not come forward with their advice, based on proven facts of cruelty and near-Nazi tactics.
I know that a number of youth will not believe – but then there are people who do not believe that the Holocaust occurred because they did not experience it themselves.