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There is a feeling that this election will lead to some change. One can never be too optimistic.
Looking back to the last few weeks, what we have seen are the typical and pitiful stomach churning utterances.
The Platinum trophy must definitely go to Daphne, the queen of predictable taste. She found good reason to praise the war in Iraq and her only ally was a septuagenarian from Mdina who writes a column in Roamer. At least he has good reason to be a blind conservative having written dozens of articles for the Daily Telegraph.
The Gold trophy I have left to the art of conviction, and this one must go to the person who still believes that the Maltese are gullible morons.
I am talking no doubt about the abortion scare created and composed by his Excellency Wenzu Mintoff’s former bodyguard.
A consolation trophy goes once again to the PN campaign for avoiding any references to Romano Prodi’s face and features.
Only too aware that if Nationalist core voters realised that Mr Prodi is leading the political Italian group l’Ulivo a political group with no ties with the PPE and very close to the Socialists, the arguments about big and small blocs would evaporate into thin air.
The Bronze cup, I am coerced to give to IVA activists and their interpretation of consistency - for having offered their candidacy to the PN when a year before they had declared their absolute independence from any political party.
‘A thank you’ prize I have preserved to Lawrence Gonzi’s unbelievable decimation of the single transferable vote. By warning telly audiences that transferring a vote to another party was endangering the supremacy of the Nationalist party. So much for the Gonzi commission on electoral reform.
The ‘Please not again’ award is catapulted into Alfred Sant’s lap for his illogical arguments that Malta’s pensions do not need to be reformed because the number of women active in the labour market is still far too low.
Political opportunism at its best.
The dinosaur super cup is specially reserved for the Broadcasting Authority for organising the most boring and old fashioned debates on public TV without any sense of what a modern media should be.
I can only imagine that the creativity for these uninspiring debates is being left to someone like Dr Kevin Aquilina, now Chief executive of the BA, but a former court registrar and in my naughty NGO days an avowed Trotskyist.
What will happen this week is not for me to say. The PN could have God on their side and position themselves for a landslide victory. But if that happened there would be good reason to remove Alfred Sant, and Wenzu Mintoff’s former bodyguard prays that he stays there – at least until the next election.
The sad part is that if the PN fare badly, there are those who will blame it on John Dalli. They have only themselves to blame for taking everyone for granted.
Even sadder is that fact that if Alfred Sant experiences victory, he will hang on to his crown, a guarantee for a decisive electoral defeat in the next national election for the MLP.
Come what may, the Labour party must get its act together and replace this man.
And the Greens, well one has to see. Definitely they have come a long way. But if they fare badly this time, the good men and women who militate here would do well to rethink their existence.
If they do well, then that is another matter.
As you read this opinion, the voting pattern will start to unravel.
What we need is an earthquake. An end to former British Socialist sympathiser Marisa Micallef Leysons who with her scriptures paints the Nationalists as the chosen people.
And hopefully an end to Labour’s mass meetings where silly diatribes about the working class are dished out without any respect for the changing world.
And a Green party that will need to open up to some middle of the road ideas and form alliances with some serious looking folk.
This country needs a new order, something to represent its middle class, the business entrepreneurs, the new values and a move away from the stuffiness of yesteryear.
What we need is smaller government and more meritocracy, fairness and equal opportunity.
Dr Gonzi will undoubtedly go on saying that he is future, Dr Sant will continue to believe that if Dom Mintoff returned to power after years in exile he can do the same, and Dr Vassallo will talk about the third way.
There is definitely another way and hopefully this result will break open a passage to a more pluralistic political class and a bigger chance for this small republic.
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