Because our voting system affords us the luxury of giving political candidates a set of preferences, your number one vote will go to one of several party candidates you happen to like the most. Sure, you want credibility and experience; maybe youth and fresh ideas; you like a moderate, gel-haired dough-faced conservative cardigan buzzing with energy and a ‘new’ outlook on politics; you think Austin Gatt actually possesses a central nervous system; you find Francis Zammit Dimech a cute distraction from the political humdrum; or you’re for a return to garrotting for sex offenders and you vote for Adrian Vassallo. Or you simply like hair gel, and you vote for Silvio Parnis. There’s no doubting the inescapable logic of shallowness that makes us choose candidates just for the way they rub us.
But it’s also politicians that try their hardest at rubbing us the right way, disgusting as that might sound, by getting chummy with us or using the power of celebrity to their advantage – much as Zammit Dimech did a couple of weeks ago at a party at Axis discotheque which turned out to be a fiasco, I am reliably informed, with a crowd turning up just to hear Ira Losco churn out two songs before vacating the building soon after.
Of all the electoral ruses that could amplify their mediocrity, I find music to be the riskiest of electioneering vehicles because it’s the currency of the young and the ballad of the drug fiend. It’s that badge of honour that makes sense when you’re 16, when what you listen to is going to have a serious effect on who your friends are going to be, but which starts wearing off once adulthood creeps in when you think Abba is actually good fun and who cares if anybody knows it because surely it’s much better than trying hard to be cool at 40 by saying you’ve got the Arctic Monkeys on your iPod and aren’t they such a great band, yak-yak-I’m-growing-old-but-I’m-trying-hard-to-sound-like-I’m-not.
Music seldom does politicians any favours because the political establishment is, by all laws of universal decency, set apart from a world which rightly celebrates sex with strangers, drugs and general depravation. It’s a dimension that is inversely proportional to politics.
But do play your cards right and confess to having been a fan of the good stuff in your salad days and stop there: mention popular and safe choices like the Beatles and the Rolling Stones and you’re home and dry; perhaps you were a bit of a loose cannon in your day and you couldn’t get by without listening to Led Zeppelin before you suddenly thought politics was a good career move; you liked punk (ooh… outrageous); or just because you were good at maths and physics, you found the hallucinatory prog-rock of Pink Floyd and King Crimson a suitable break from simultaneous equations. Say you like hip-hop and you’re officially committed to a home for the idiots.
You can do worse than that: you can think your musical jukebox is going to enrich your political profile and enamour you with the fickle world of the young. That’s what Charles Mangion, Labour deputy leader, does on his website with a page named ‘CM’s musicpod’ (colloquial use of initials for chummy-effect).
They are the songs “selected by Dr Charles Mangion” (so much for the minimalist CM) for his supporters to choose for his campaign “if you know a particular song that can deliver a positive message”, the website exhorts. They are positive all right, positively vile soundtracks to an environmental disaster.
It reads like a selection from Relaxing Muzak Anthems For Politicians Volume 36: Proud by Heather Small (Peugeot 406 advert); Things can only get better by D:REAM (Blair’s victory tune 1997); Lifted by Lighthouse Family (Nissan Primera advert 1996); Beautiful Day by U2 (more uplifting Irish nonsense); Fields of Gold by Sting (tantric sex, tantric sex…); Children by Robert Miles (ah… glory days for Labour!); and Renaissance by M-People (beep-beep-beep, I’m an android in a discotheque).
I recommend them to you if you have just been made redundant or getting a root canal. It’s like having your eyes caressed by a cheese-grater while Bono reads out Pjan ghal-Bidu Gdid.

Alternattiva Demokratika has blamed government policies on the importation of trees for the introduction in Malta of the Red Palm Weevil, which is decimating palm trees all over Malta. Yes, it’s a plague begotten on all of us because of the afforestation projects by the Nationalist pharaohs. It’s a lone, selfless attempt to bring down the government by unleashing a swarm of Egyptian beetles. It’s the hungry hunt for the palm-owning vote. And environment minister George Pullicino has reacted with a counter-statement! Is this election getting hotter or what?