There is absolutely no doubt where Sandro Chetcuti’s political support lies

This is the man who actually boasts among his cohorts that he personally raised – through his network of contacts – a seven-figure sum for the Labour Party’s 2013 electoral campaign, who had a ‘pop-up office’ at the Labour Party’s headquarters for that purpose, and who organised lunch and supper meetings for the Labour leader to introduce him around.

Of course he was doing it for what he could get in return, but it is also where his sympathies lie anyway, as the photographs below show more than clearly.

The Nationalist Party should not approach him. On the contrary, it should line up with a barricade of defensive weapons should he approach them – or take the simpler route of slamming the door in his face.

“But we won’t win elections like that,” some say. Well, actually, in this particular case, that’s exactly the way to do it. The Nationalist Party’s electoral market is completely different to Labour’s. The people it needs to get back, and the new votes it has got to attract, are those of the people who want to see some principled stands and an end to cosy arrangements.

Whose votes does the Nationalist Party plan to attract by laying out a red carpet for a specimen like Sandro Chetcuti and hoping he walks up it? Has anyone made that assessment? “Oh, gosh, look – let’s vote PN because they’re making friends with Sandro.” Well, exactly.

On the other hand, what they are going to get from trying to hook up with somebody like that is: “Kollha xorta. Jien m’inhiex se nivvota”. Or worse still: “Bloody hell, we need them to stick up for us against those goddamned people like Chetcuti and Debono, and now they’re trying to get between the sheets with them too? I expect that from Labour but not from them.”

The most obvious route to electoral success, for the Nationalist Party, is to take a principled, clear stand against this government’s choices and the people it favours through murky deals and associations. If people are going to vote against Labour, they’re going to vote against Labour because they’re disgusted.

You vote against Labour by voting Nationalist. This means that the Nationalist Party has to distance itself completely from anything and anyone that is generating people’s disgust for the Labour Party/government. That doesn’t mean only Labour politicians, Labour apparatchiks, or Labour contracts. If Konrad Mizzi’s power station deal is murky, then it stands to reason that both parties involved in it are murky too, and not just the party which signed the deal for the government.

And that is just one example.

Alfred Sant and Sandro Chetcuti, president of the Malta Developers Association, at the Labour Party’s May Day meeting in Bormla in 2014