Some of my more attentive readers might just have noticed that there’s this bug going round called “election fever”. Now, there’s no need to panic… yet. Save your energies for when you need them the most (i.e., when bird flu breaks out, or the Price Control agreement expires next March). But for the political hypochondriacs out there – the ones who take their daily doses of prescribed propaganda, and attend their party’s mass faith-healing sessions with religious devotion – I thought I’d share the results of years of painstaking medical research into this unpleasant disease. Below is a list of the more common symptoms, together with tips on how to avoid infection and prevent the disease from spreading.
WARNING: For electoral use only. Read the ballot sheet attentively, do not administer to children who don’t have a voting document, and if symptoms persist, get the next plane out of here.

Altered Statesmen: A syndrome whereby politicians who are normally sensible, moderate and rather level-headed suddenly metamorphose into hysterical, irrational and incoherent embodiments of panic the moment they step onto a podium to address their party’s kunsilliera. It is believed the term was first coined by Dr Austin Gatt – an expert in the field, who gave a fine demonstration of the ailment at the PN general medical conference last October – but it recently appears to have also infected Tonio Fenech: parliamentary secretary for the rabid defence of the euro changeover process from the onslaught of evil, short-changed and obviously Labour housewives.
No known cure, but in at least one case, the pressing of criminal and civil charges has been known to greatly reduce symptoms.

Brochures: As in door-to-door-visits (qv), infected candidates tend to develop a unique psychotic delusion which causes them to mistake your letter-box for a glorified public toilet, wherein to defecate copious quantities of brochures, leaflets, anthologies and other examples of wasted trees. These usually contain invaluable personal data, such as the candidate’s years of loyal service to the local brass band; photographs of the candidate with the Pope or the local hairdresser, as well as the occasional public endorsement of the candidate by his former kindergarten headmistress (“Pippo was a very good boy at school... he hardly ever missed the potty during toilet-training…”).
For my part, I have for years been trying to persuade my local council to introduce letter-boxes with in-built flushing systems, but so far without success. Will keep you (ahem) posted…

Canvasser: Starting out as a primitive, ape-like hominid who bullies voters by day and works as a Paceville bouncer by night, the Maltese canvasser’s subsequent evolution into a human being depends entirely on a symbiotic relationship with the political candidate of his choice. Should his candidate fail to be elected, the canvasser will be condemned to an eternity of dead-end, low profit jobs leading all too often to a life of crime. Should his candidate succeed, the canvasser will be able to pick a prominent position on any of a vast array of government boards, committees, commissions, and authorities: all of which were concocted with the exclusive aim to provide the canvasser with remuneration for services rendered. In some cases, canvassers have also been known to go down both paths at the same time, with surprisingly successful results.
Strangely, none of our political parties have vowed to rid this country of this parasitic menace once and for all.

Door to door visits: Not unlike the traditional blessing of the house, election fever also makes individual candidates of all parties feel entitled to simple parachute into your home at will, regardless of whether you had any intention of actually letting them in or not.
Depending on the party concerned, they will then either bore you to tears by promising an ocean of change which they can’t deliver, or simply lambaste all the other parties for being inconsistent, incompetent, immoral and pro-choice.
From personal experience I have found the following cures for this inconvenience to be occasionally successful:
a) Keep a large dog named “Mintoff”.
b) Call any of a number of pest agencies specialising in Politician Control. (I recommend COMTEC: Committee for the Ongoing Militant Termination of Electoral Candidates).
c) Paint yourself black and pretend to be an illegal immigrant. You’ll be amazed at how your existence suddenly no longer matters.
d) Disguise yourself as Charlon Gouder.

Election campaign: It is in the nature of the virus to incubate for a period of (roughly) five years, only to suddenly flare up into unsustainable proportions the moment the Prime Minister announces the election date. You have been warned.

Floating voter: One of the symptoms of election fever is amnesia. For instance, once the disease sets in, elected representatives tend to spectacularly forget that they had been voted into their positions specifically to represent individual voters, and that as such, their allegiance should be towards the voter, not the other way round. But one by one, they all succumb to the delusion that the individual voter is actually the private property of their own political party, and that therefore voting for that party is not a matter of choice, but of divine loyalty. For this reason, those voters who might actually think for themselves, and base their voting intentions on the various options available, are not respected for exercising their basic civic rights. Oh, no: they are transformed into squishy, squashy horrible little jellyfish.

Grass roots: Among the more incongruous symptoms of election fever is a sudden marked interest in obscure horticultural phenomena. Not only do green politicians develop a unique fascination with palm trees and the various parasitic insects which destroy them; but the larger parties become fascinated with the weeds, shrubs, fungi and algae growing in their respective electorate garden, and why they’re all threatening not to vote.

Hunting: A cursory glance at the development of modern man will reveal that our ancestors passed from numerous phases – from scavenger to forager to hunter-gatherer to farmer – before evolving into today’s coach potato. However, some of us are still in our hunter-gatherer stage: using hunting as an excuse to blackmail political parties into kow-towing to their demands, and then gathering in large numbers to protest the moment they don’t get exactly what they want.
It is testimony to the potentially fatal nature of the disease that these primordial tactics seem to work… every single time.

Independent media: Sadly, in some cases electoral fever can even be fatal. The first to die are usually the editorial policies of independently owned media, which one by one succumb to other symptoms such as panic and altered states (qv), resulting in newspaper editorials which seem to have been written by the general secretary of a particular party’s Office of the Holy Inquisition.

Josie Muscat: Another victim of the occasionally fatal strain of election fever is a sense of humour, levity and a general lightness of touch among politicians. Infected specimens will suffer the delusion that their existence is actually important in the general scheme of things; some will even try to convince you that, as their election to Parliament was in any case pre-ordained by God, Armageddon will inevitably occur should the voters decree otherwise.
Fortunately for the rest of us, however, recent developments have proved beyond doubt that some local politicians are completely immune to these effects. These remain steadfastly dotty, colourful, whimsical and impossible to take seriously throughout the entire election campaign.

Needless to add, this fills the international medical research community with hope that one day, this endemic malady of ours may finally be eradicated.