Labour could retain its fourth seat in the European Parliament
Interviewers scoffed when the Opposition leader showed wariness about the Nationalist Party’s chances of winning a third seat in the European Parliament. “Come on, it’s a foregone conclusion,” one of them said. “There is no way that can’t happen, even if Labour wins the same majority it did in the general election.” Then there was some more scoffing when Simon Busuttil insisted that there is a real risk that the result will be 4-2.
Yet here we are now, and the third seat hangs in the balance for the Nationalist Party.
Perhaps those same interviewers and newspaper columnists will now understand that they should never pick up and repeat messages but should instead work things out for themselves, even if it means seeking the help of a number-cruncher with a calculator.
The message that the third seat was a dead cert and foregone conclusion for the PN came from Labour. The fact that Muscat himself said it repeatedly while in debate with Simon Busuttil should have raised people’s antennae to it.
Why would Labour have wanted to put out the message that the Nationalist Party would get a third seat come what may? That should be obvious: Labour reads your average lukewarm PN voter like a book. It knows that if that lukewarm PN voter feels that the PN will get a third seat with or without his vote, then he’ll go off and give himself a thrill by voting for something else or not voting at all.
47 Comments Comment
Leave a Comment
I am still hearing Deborah Schembri on TVM: “U ajma, m’hemmx x’xtara, it-tielet siggu se iggibuh zgur.”
I am still hearing Joseph Muscat say he is the underdog.
I’ve given up on the Maltese electorate. The majority appear to be brain dead.
While your second sentence might well be truthful, please bear in mind that this was not the general election.
Exactly for that reason the electorate should have sent the message to the government. It could have put pressure to keep it in check without risking a change in government.
Shame on you for not respecting other peoples’ opinions. Tridiex ta ‘European’ ukoll??!! Pff….joker.
[Daphne – Please stop using ‘Pfff’ in almost every one of your comments. This is not a Facebook Timeline and in any case, it is bad manners.]
“Ghax jien tajjeb fil-matematika” or something in that vein Joe said regarding the certainty of three seats each. What a buffoon.
The bottom-line, Daphne, is that Simon Busuttil made a clear target – that he would give the PN a 3rd seat in the EP. If he fails to do so, I believe he should bow out gracefully. Resigning now instead of in four years time would only help him re-focus his career and the direction of the PN.
A few weeks ago he also told The Malta Independent that he would resign if he fails to win the next general election. Common sense should show him that that was an overly ambitious target. He should resign now.
Resign and then what? Another year lost till another leader is found and he starts asserting himself, this is not football where after a series of losses you replace the coach.
The answer is more collegiality. The leader is not the party – that is the Mintoffian style of party politics.
I just hope that Simon Busuttil is surrounded by advisors and confidantes who criticise, disagree and do not flatter and praise him, as I get the perception was the case with Lawrence Gonzi.
If Dr. Busuttil resigns now, he would do himself and the Nationalist Party a world of good because it will give the party four full years to re-organize itself in time for the next general election whilst he can get on with his life with a certain amount of serenity. My two cents worth anyway.
That must be the two cents Muscat promised you. It makes about the same amount of sense.
Oh for fuck’s sake. What a ridiculous idea. These are European elections, not national ones. Simon Busuttil didn’t fail. Neither did the Nationalist Party.
Busuttil is the best leader the Nationalist Party can hope for, and will make a terrific Prime Minister when his time comes.
Who would you rather have as future Prime Minister? Think on that before you spout more of this resignation rubbish.
…..Your comment compelled me to pass another!!
Dr. Mario Demarco would make an excellent leader and PM.
Nuff said,
Pav
Thank you for stating the obvious. I keep on seeing ridiculous internet posts saying that it is a black day for PN today.
Bollocks – do they even know how to analyse election results, can’t they see what is happening with the Norman Lowell factor? For Christ’s sake, PN remained stable in a context of dished-out lottery awards.
It is PL which lost votes despite dishing all that out and spending a fortune on the campaign.
What did you all expect? Maltese people have a tendency to be sado-masochistic and vindictive. It has got to get bloody worse before it gets better.
Viva l -labour
Mela ma ghadux moviment whoever you are?
Hej Hej Hej – looking good hun, sweet.
The interviewers who scoffed were collaborators.
Why worry. Let the country crumble. Il-Gahan ma jitghallimx.
il-gahan tghallem u kif. il-pn baqa’ ma tghallem xejn
A Gahan will always vote Labour even if was impaled by them or held at gunpoint by Simon Busuttil.
L-aqwa li Frankie jfarfar il-vetrina tal-hgieg bis-sriedaq u Bondi’ jdoqq il-kitarra u jbennen.
Life was never so easy.
Now the PL cannot say anymore that it is the underdog.
4-2 in favour of the PL was always on the table as far as I was concerned, even though other Nationalists gave me a hard time whenever I said this (I had also claimed that in the previous election, the PL would win by a majority of some 30,000 votes).
But let us face it, the majority must feel they are getting what they want.
Refund on VAT of motor vehicles – check
Arriva out – check
Civil unions – check
Gay adoptions – bonus check
Decrease in energy tariffs – check
Stable energy prices – check
Lower tax rates – check
Meritocracy – well there is definitely something in it for labour supporters
Is Muscat really delivering the above (and more)? Probably not when you consider the hidden costs of the above. But to many, this is simply translating into some extra cash in their pockets (screw the kaxxa ta’ Malta and yeah for the peanuts) and that is all they care about.
I blame the Nationalist Party machine for missing loads of opportunities to really rally its supporters over the lasy year by organising mass meetings and protests (citizenship scheme, power station tanker, gay adoption etc) as well the previous leadership (yes Gonzi) for leaving the party with this legacy, having not only squandered the people’s trust and votes by making promises that it would not keep, but also losing touch with the electorate, not taking care of its own and allowing the party machine to degenerate into the ineffective state it currently is in.
Whether the PN will get the third seat is a question that has yet to be answered but I am not holding my breath. The questions now are: Quo vadis PN? Quo vadis Simon Busuttil?
It is precisely how the next issues will be tackled by the party that will literally make or break the PN and unless the present leadership puts its foot down and mans up to Muscat, then they will simply be fighting a losing battle. Muscat needs to be stood up to, confronted, challenged and not appeased. There is the time when the country needs a Churchill, rather than a Chamberlain.
Of course it was a foregone conclusion for the PN to win the third seat. This would have been achieved if there was a swing of a mere 3000 voters.
Surely this was not some impossible target, but a very minimum requirement.
The fact is the PN polled 3% LESS than the last general election.
Please don’t blame interviewers and newspaper columnists for not doing the correct number crunching.
This failure rests with the PN leadership , and Dr Bustill should do the honourable thing and step down.
[Daphne – You cannot compare elector behaviour in general elections to elector behaviour in ‘marginal’ elections like the EP and local councils. The dynamics at play are very different. In general elections, there is a turn-out of around 98%. In this election, turn-out was around 74.7%. In general elections, people do not vote in any significant number for the fringe parties, because they are conscious of choosing the government. In EP elections, they do – as we have just seen. You cannot analyse elector behaviour based on wishful thinking and what you would like to see, but on what in fact exists. Lots of Maltese citizens who live elsewhere in Europe did not return to Malta to vote, for instance, but voted in the EP elections in their country of residence, which they are permitted to do. That is not a factor in general elections. You also have to factor in cognitive dissonance and the way the mind works to protect the ego when this comes into play: the natural tendency is to act to shore up one’s original decision (in, for example, voting Labour) to further convince yourself that you were right. This is the psychological equivalent of determinedly throwing good money after bad in business: it is an emotional decision and not a pragmatic one. You can’t fight that. You have to work with it.]
You also blame the lukewarm PN voter for not bothering to vote. Daphne, I suspect you don’t have your grassroots feelers on. Many people, whether PN supporters or switchers simply don’t engage with Dr Busuttil. You seem not to grasp the reality that there were people who voted PN a year ago, and voted Labour in this election.
[Daphne – Quite the contrary, Freedom5: I read every poll that is published and notice the movements. I am also pretty good at picking up signals from the way people talk, even from half a word and sometimes even from something as slight as an eye movement when X or Y is mentioned. It’s a mixture of natural ability and writing a newspaper column for 24 years, which means that I have had to develop strong perceptive abilities or have my column bite the dust. The fact is that if you analyse the pattern of PN elector behaviour, the core vote is a whole lot smaller than that of the Labour Party, which means that the rest are lukewarm and actually enjoy the process of either not voting PN or not voting at all when they think the result does not matter. PN elector behaviour is far less tribally engaged. There is no such thing as ‘grassroots’. People are people. What you mean by ‘grassroots’, I suppose, is the core vote.
As for people not engaging with Simon Busuttil, I reserve judgement on that. No political party has ever been lucky enough to elect a leader who instantly engages massive support even from the party itself, let alone from outside it. Joseph Muscat himself required a complete image and presentation overhaul before he began to make inroads – look up his photographs and videos from even four to five years ago: goatee, terrible suits, black shirts worn with white ties, hopeless diction and presentation, ‘hamallu libes ghal tieg’ image, and so on. After about two years, he was given a physical image overhaul, a speech overhaul, and the party engaged ‘human satellites’ who began networking him into social and business groups previously dominated by the PN. Realising that, come what may, he was going to win the 2013 election even if only by default, key members of these social and business groups took him up, not necessarily because they wanted to maximize their personal advantage but because human nature is such that people prefer to be on the winning side and enjoy the company of those with power and influence, even if they do not like them at a personal level and would never have ordinarily chosen them as their social companions.
I am very ‘unromantic’ and down to earth about all of this. The main reason people don’t engage with Simon Busuttil right now is because they don’t like a loser and they don’t want to be ‘seen’ with a loser. It has nothing to do with his own qualities personally. Alfred Sant was and remains a spectacularly unengaging person at every level, especially the personal, yet he was elected prime minister in 1996 and many of the very same people who are now dissing Simon Busuttil for not being personable enough were flocking around the robotic Sant at social engagements, behaving as though everything he said was utterly fascinating. One of the major advantages (possibly the only one, I would say) of having been a political observer, for the purposes of a newspaper column, for a quarter of a century is that I have been to many receptions, conferences and so on and have seen the exact same people flirting with a procession of politicians depending on the circumstances. I have also seen two former prime ministers wandering about alone and ignored (George Borg Olivier and Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici) and the greatest prime minister of them all, the celebrated Eddie Fenech Adami, trying to make his way through a tight crowd at an embassy reception with people barely noticing or bothering to stand aside to let him through.
I am also treated like a politician despite being a journalist (lots of people can’t make the distinction – ‘if she writes about politics then she must be a politician’) and so I am subjected to pretty much the same barrage of complaints/praise/advice/helpful comments that MPs are. That is how I get a lot of interesting material for my newspaper column and also how I have a handle on the way people think (or the way they don’t).
Don’t make the mistake of interpreting my views as the views I observe in others. The fact that I know how other people think does not mean I am going to start thinking the same way. I write about my own views and change them only on the basis of thought and analysis, not fashion or the need for votes. I have answered you at length because I know you and respect your views. I add this note for the benefit of readers who might be wondering why I have bothered to reply in detail to somebody who is ostensibly anonymous.]
Daphne, Simon Busuttil has yet to realise that he is no longer in Brussels and is now dealing with possibly the crudest nation in Europe.
Viva il-lejber! Rebha kbira ohra ghal lijder Joseph Muscat! Viva il-lejber viva il-lejber hej! Hej!
Hawn min qiegħed imaqdar lil Dr. Simon Busuttil bħala kap tal-P.N.
Il-verita’ hija li jmissna nkunu grati lejn dan il-bniedem li aċċetta li jmexxi partit li kien għadu kif ġarrab telfa elettorali u partit mifni bi problem finanzjarji. Dr. Busuttil qed jqgħmel il-mirakli.
Fl-opinjoni tiegħi d-diżastru li bih qed imexxi Dr. Muscat għadu mhux qed jidher. Fix-xhur li ġejjin jibdew jidhru riżultati tat-tmexxija tiegħu. La jibdew ifittxu x-xogħol u ma jsibuhx taraw kemm ikantaw ‘ viva l-lejber ‘.
Grazzi, Dr. Busuttil.
The bottom line is that Joseph Muscat has achieved three unprecedented landslide electoral victories, and PN has slumped to 40% of the poll. No one would have imagined PN would shed 10% since the 2008 election.
[Daphne – Your bottom line is wrong. The PN has not slumped to 40%. It has been at 40% in every EP election since the first in 2004. EP elections are not factored in as landslide losses or victories. You have succumbed to the current Labour propaganda. If that were the case, then we would not generally be speaking of Alfred Sant’s three consecutive electoral losses (1998, 2003 and 2008) and his referendum disaster while failing completely to register his ‘landslide victory’ in the EP election of 2004, when Labour polled 48% of the vote and the PN polled 40%. The message in this election is something completely different: that a big chunk of electors can’t relate to either party. Given that the Nationalist Party is still in a state of flux, that right there is its audience.]
All elections since independence were won and lost within a margin of 2 to 5 %. This is now a staggering 13%.
Muscat has created a movement, which as you yourself has correctly observed has morphed into a cult. It is going to take one heck of a leader to beat Muscat. Is Busuttil the man?
[Daphne – I have to disagree with you on the specifics. Muscat has not created a movement, because movements have aims and are not an end in themselves. The shift away from the traditional ‘block-voting’ patterns is not due to political change but due to social change: a really major social shift that is the result of 25 years of PN policies which have brought about major social mobility. The Labour Party rode with this, using the same methods as those used by religious movements and cults to ‘outreach’ via key networkers to groups that were previously not accessible to them. ‘Soft’ targets were identified, reeled in and used as bait to lure others. Once support for Labour became socially acceptable through this system, it became easier to pull more difficult people on board. This method dovetailed with audience-segmentation (the ‘gay’ vote, Muslims, etc – lots of it very cynical).
No, I don’t think it will take one heck of a leader to beat Muscat. It won’t even take somebody with leadership qualities. His Achilles heel, as any close observer will have noted by now, is clearly very tall, very personable/good-looking, and very smart/self-assured/charismatic men. At several levels, he will not be able to cope with that and will be rendered defenceless against the personal and public impact. But such men do not exist in Maltese politics, and you have to work with what you’ve got. I merely point it out to illustrate the fact that it does not take ‘one heck of a leader’ but only a leader who makes him feel deferential and personally inferior, and more crucially, whose admiration he will want. Muscat plays power games by using sarcasm and contemptuous remarks to reduce his opponent in the eyes of those who are watching. So obviously, the way to handle it is either by beating him at his own game or by being the sort of person to whom he does not wish to be sarcastic and contemptuous.]
Or perhaps a woman as leader?
Ghadni ma fhimtx l-elettorat Malti fuq illum. L-uniku hsieb li jigini f’mohhi huwa li l-elettorat ghad ghandu feriti miftuha mill-gvernijiet tal-PN u jridu z-zmien biex jigu mfejqa ghaliex erbatghax il xahar kienu qsar wisq biex wiehed jinsa.
Issa l-partit irrid jiehu in konsiderazzjoni dak li qed jghid l-elettorat anki mill-opposizzjoni fuq it-tmexxija tal-partit u l-amministrazzjoni kollha.
Baqa erba snin u jekk issir dak li hu evidenti u mehtieg ghad hemm ic-chance. Ghaliex b’dispjacir nghid li din it-tmexija mihiex popolari mal-partitarji u nhasseb mill-bidu dehret. L-istess kif gralu Lawrence Gonzi li kellu lil ta’ madwaru ukoll kontra tieghu avolja kien ta’ gid ghall-pajjiz.
Tal-misthija, I’m afraid most of what you wrote is nonsense.
How exactly can anyone, on their ballot sheet, “jghid xi haga fuq it-tmexxija tal-partit u l-amministrazzjoni kollha?”
Did we have the same ballot sheet, you and I? Because mine wasn’t a referendum on Simon Busuttil.
I didn’t see a suggestion box addressed to the Nationalist Party administration at my polling station.
It-tmexxija mhix popolari mal-partitarji, you say? Then let me say it loud and clear: NITNEJJEK MILL-PARTITARJI. A party doesn’t exist to serve its own officials or even its own supporters. It exists to serve the country.
Right now I see a choice between Labour, which is beyond the pits, and the NP, which is imperfect, sure. But I’d rather have Simon Busuttil as my prime minister than anyone else. And that includes anyone else in the Nationalist Party (sorry, Helga Ellul, I want you as finance minister).
Il-partitarji will vote PN anyway. Or what sort of partitarji would they be. The rest of us are the ones you should worry about.
Ghalhekk Goni kellu sahansitra il-kabinett warajh fl-ahhar legislatura. Int rid tara mhux x’ivvita il hardcore imma l-bqijajekk hux qed tappella ghalih!!
Ghalhekk Gonzi kellu l-grupp parlamentari warajh fl-ahhar legislatura! Int mhux lil hardcore trid tara li taghmel x’ taghmel jibqa warajk izda l-ohrajn jekk hux qed tappella ghalihom.
Ikkalma, spelli sew, u irrepeti.
Ghax ma fhimt xejn.
OK, tajjeb. Mela qieghed taqbel mieghi, jigifieri li l-PN ghandu jfittex li jigbed il-voti mhux tal-partitarji tieghu stess, ghax dawk xorta se jivvutaqlu, imma tan-non-committed voters. Qabel kont qed tghid l-oppost.
And where shall the PN find this tall, handsome, charismatic man I wonder?
[Daphne – Neither party has one or is likely to have one soon.]
So how will Muscat be defeated? I still say Simon Busuttil should resign immediately and Mario Demarco take his place. He is the best bet to stop this haemorrhage of votes and is at least liberal on social issues.
[Daphne – The fact that you like Mario Demarco does not mean that people will vote for him. This is a mistake that many people make: projecting their own personal preferences onto the rest of the electorate. No, I don’t think he is a better bet than Simon Busuttil. I would say that he is roughly at the same level. And no, he is not more liberal on social issues than Busuttil is. They have the same views.]
Spot on, Daphne.
I’m sure that the party is not made by the same dozen.
Daphne, I will again reply, because I do appreciate your counter arguments. Mine are also based on an honest loyalty to the PN and it truly saddens me to see the party in such a sorry state.
I think you are misinterpreting the bottom line. I too did not give much importance to the EP election result of 2009, when the PN polled only 40%. It was “normal” for the PN in government to lose EP elections, but win general elections. It happened twice.
This time the situation is different. This should have been the “Yellow Card” to Labour, as Dr Busuttil himself claimed it will be. Instead PN lost a further 3% since the general election a year ago.
[Daphne – You see, this is where we part company. You can’t compare one election with another, because the significant factors are completely different. In 2013, it required a tremendous psychological adjustment for certain cohorts to vote Labour for the first time in a general election. Many of them then went on to suffer severe cognitive dissonance as their expectations of meritocracy and superior performance (in these cohorts, it wouldn’t necessarily be personal favours) were not met. The psyche adjusts to mitigate the discomfort of cognitive dissonance by 1. taking concrete action to reverse that decision or address it directly, or 2. acting to reinforce the original decision to prove to oneself and others that one was correct and that one’s judgement is not, after all, impaired. Option 1. is considerably more difficult than option 2., and yesterday’s result was partly a manifestation of that. The result is the same, yes, but it is the motivation for voting that you have to be looking at, because that shapes how things will be seen over the next few years.]
Overlook the significance of yesterday’s result and PN will be in for a nasty surprise in 4 years time – it will be another landslide victory for Muscat. His cult style lies deep and not fickle as some people think.
[Daphne – Yes, you and I agree 100% on that. I was, in fact, the first person to identify and write about the phenomenon, and to link it to the fact that Maltese society is culturally predisposed to religious movements especially when they don’t come in the guise of a religious movement that is not religious, so to speak. Most Maltese are raised in authoritarian households where there is a predisposition towards conformity with the outward form of religion, if not actual belief in it. This so much predisposes them to the pattern that even when they reject religion and become atheists or non-believers, they respond very positively to any appeal that comes in the form of a religious movement with a central authoritarian figure. One of the reasons why I am completely immune to that kind of thing (and indeed am repelled by it) is because I wasn’t raised in that kind of household at all. The formative years of our upbringing are what shape the electorate in the end. ]
Indeed it has continued to win over people since a year ago. See Malta today polls. There was some percentage points of people who voted PN in 2013 and trust Muscat more than Busuttil.
[Daphne – It was bound to happen. Certain sorts of people are magnetised by overt success. The first social occasion I went to after the 1996 election, everyone I met was a Labour voter and had identified Sant’s amazing powers well ahead of the poll, while Fenech Adami’s time was over. Fortunately, I am a well-brought-up sort of girl, so I didn’t raise the subject the next time I met them all again in 1998 or 1999 – but interestingly, some of them did it again this time. The thing is, besides having quite a long perspective on politics in Malta (relatively speaking, at least), I also have no illusions at all about human nature. It is possibly the only thing I have in common with the prime minister, which is why I am able to recognise it in him.]
H P Baxxter, your reply to tal-Misthija is tal-biki. I expect something more intelligent coming from you.
I will again state that I have nothing personal against Dr Busuttil or in favour of any other possible leader. It is you who are blinkered and not seeing the messages the electorate is sending to the PN and its leadership.
Of course Busuttil’s name was literally not on the ballot paper, but he is the leader of the party the eleven candidates are contesting. By your stupid analysis, Busuttil should have in the press conference said: “My name was not on the ballot paper so I have nothing to do with this very disappointing result”. Ridiculous.
I can read the figures, so don’t come talking to me about seeing the messages.
Did you expect a PN victory in this election, you stupid man? I have nothing personal against you, but the Nationalist Party’s core vote seems to consist of a lot of people like you.
One final comment re De Marco. He certainly is a far better orator, and can engage with people. I’m sure he is not prone to silly slip-ups like “I’m still coming out of my shell”, and constantly apologising for PN’s mistakes rather than trumpeting the very significant achievements.
It’s Busuttil who unwittingly brings negativity on his own party rather than on the government’s failures. He seems to repeatedly snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
It looks like Labour will definetely retain its fourth seat.
The final scenario will be the distribution of David Casa’s extra votes after being elected.
That will leave three candidates in the running for just one seat.
In all probability they will be Clint Camilleri, Marlene Mizzi and another PN candidate (close battle between Joe Bugeja, Therese Comodini Cachia and Francis Zammit Dimech).
The one with the least number of votes will be eliminated, unless, PN inherits a substantial number of votes from AD, Norman Lowell and the “King”, the PN candidate risks being eliminated and PL will elect yet again two candidates at one go (both without a quota).
Bottom line – it’s a 4-2 end result.
I hope I am wrong.
“They should never pick up messages (of others) and repeat them, but should instead work out things for themselves”.
This refers to journalists, spokespersons, and others who should have a higher level of intelligence than the average citizen, and it is very apt.
How much worse is the situation concerning the citizen with an average, or below-average, intelligence, who tends to accept blindly a leader who does the thinking for him?
Peter Mallia, Joseph Muscat also promised to resign if the new power station is not up and working by March 2015.
We will have to see if he has the guts to keep his promise as this huge project hasn’t even taken off. Another promise broken perhaps?