With a year to go for the next general elections, successive opinion polls put the PL in a seemingly unassailable lead. Respondents appear far more comfortable with PM Abela’s steady leadership as opposed to opposition leader Bernard Grech.
Before the labour ‘trolls’ get carried away, we acknowledge that polls are merely a snapshot at a particular time. As former British Prime Minister Harold Wilson said, a week is a long time in politics. PM Abela rightly emphasises the need to guard against complacency and not get carried away by the numbers.
With the exception of the general election of 2008, when the PN was confirmed with a threadbare majority, the PN has been trashed time and again at the polls since the MEP elections of 2004. What message has the electorate been sending the PN? Is the party listening?
One of the factors for the confusion that is the PN, is the Delia versus Establishment saga. In my opinion, Delia should never have been allowed to contest the leadership election until he cleared his name of the serious allegations levelled against him by, who else but, Daphne Caruana Galizia. However, once the party failed to carry out a proper due diligence exercise and Delia won the leadership race, the choice of the party members should have been respected.
The mess that the PN was in, with a huge credibility and financial deficit, was a long time in the making and the blame cannot be laid at Delia’s door. The party sent a very wrong message to the electorate by its failure to respect the will of its members. So much for Nerik Mizzi’s “parlano le urne”.
The PN is a party hijacked by elements within Repubblika and Occupy Justice who think they have a divine right to govern these islands, by virtue of a superior DNA or as a result of nature bestowing them with generous crown jewels. They disparage anyone who dares show a dissenting opinion, using such adjectives as ‘trolls’ or ‘sheep’.
The PN is a party hijacked by elements within Repubblika and Occupy Justice who think they have a divine right to govern these islands.
Incredibly, the group includes a member who used to administer holy communion, and who made public his wish for mayhem and poverty to descend on this country and its inhabitants, apart from branding a female labour MP ‘a whore’.
This negativity has been brewing for a long time. The PN report on the 2013 General Election debacle did not mince words, putting most of the blame on the late DCG’s poison pen. Not only has the PN not disavowed this type of politics, but the powers that be at Tal-Pieta’, led by Simon Busuttil, have actually encouraged this type of behaviour.
They never lose a chance to put spokes into the country’s wheels, especially in the international fora. The remaining two PN MEPs have taken it upon themselves to increase the dose with their EPP partners to try to score some political brownie points. But their double standards are laid bare when they stood up for the Polish and Hungarian despots part of the EPP group, with one of them earning the honorific title of ‘Mrs Mafia’.
It is indeed despicable that in a time of an unprecedented pandemic, Occupy Justice and Repubblika did their utmost to waste the government’s time and effort by filing frivolous court cases with the intention of putting the PM, the Commander of the Armed Forces and the forces’ personnel behind bars.
These elements chose the Citizenship by Investment programme, their favourite flogging horse, for special treatment, no doubt because dismantling the programme would deprive the government of a source of income which enabled it to sustain the people through the pandemic.
It is detestable that, at a time when the country should have shown unity in the face of a unique double whammy of a health and economic challenge, these elements were busy raising issues of good governance with their European friends. Mind you, most of these issues were inherited from the Knights and the British and the PN never had any qualms about using them to its advantage during its long time in office.
The people’s choice is always the right choice, even if one does not share that opinion. Their primary concern is to raise their families in a dignified manner and a peaceful environment.
The Opposition should rid itself of the unsavoury elements within the party and focus on showing voters that it is a valid alternative government by putting forward credible and suitably costed proposals. The present short-sighted tactics will get the PN nowhere. As they say, ‘if you always do what you always did, you will always get what you always got’. So, grow up, show that you are a credible alternative to the government, keep it on its toes, censor its shortcomings but, realise that confrontational politics and divisive tactics will get you nowhere.
