There can be little doubt as to who is the coming man

On Saturday, Muscat may well win another five years in power, but the die is cast. He is now officially yesterday’s man.

As things stand, Busuttil – see picture below, taken yesterday in Sliema – is clearly and obviously the coming man. Even if he loses this one, he’s got to stay. The momentum he has built up is exceptional and it will overthrow Muscat at the next hurdle after the general election.

I hope he will not step down if he loses, because that would mean the Nationalist Party starting again from scratch with somebody new, and building all that up again. And that, of course, is exactly why Yesterday’s Man Muscat has spent the past few weeks demanding, with increasing intensity, Busuttil’s post-electoral resignation.

What would have happened had Eddie Fenech Adami stepped down after losing the general election to Alfred Sant in 1996? Well, exactly. A general election would have been called 22 months later while the Nationalist Party was still faffing about with a new leader.

Whether he emerges victorious on Sunday or not, Muscat is now the past and Busuttil is the future. I have been observing party politics narrowly for the purposes of writing about the subject for the last 27 years, and it couldn’t be more obvious to me.

One way or another, Muscat is finished. If the electorate doesn’t finish him off on Saturday, the Labour Party will finish him off within the next two years. Either way, he’s a goner.

If he wins, he will be undermined from within by those who cannot tolerate his indecent liaison with his henchmen and the destruction it has wrought on party and country.