Malta Finally Has An Opposition Again
No one saw this coming. Every political survey missed it, the Labour Party expected to cruise through this election with ease, and the Nationalist Party seemed resigned to another heavy defeat.
And yet it happened. The seemingly unbeatable PL behemoth has suffered its first blow at the polls since getting elected to government, and it appears to be a significant one.
This doesn’t necessarily mean the balance of power has shifted. Some people might have simply been attracted by the aura of Roberta Metsola rather than the PN as a party, while some traditional PL voters might have wanted to give the government a warning ahead of the general election.
However, it does mean that, for the first time in over a decade, the next election could be an actual competition and not a rubber-stamping exercise.
European Parliament President Roberta Metsola was the most popular MEP candidate by far
PN supporters at the counting hall are jubilant and can feel that they finally have some momentum.
A lot of credit must be given to Bernard Grech. He may not have a larger-than-life personality and his leadership style is more compromising than it is assertive, but he has become the first PN leader in four attempts to overturn the PL’s supermajority.
It wasn’t an easy feat. The PL threw everything at this election, misusing its power of incumbency like there was no tomorrow and bringing out the master of vote-winners Joseph Muscat for a number of public speeches.
The PN also had to deal with a late surge of support for independents Arnold Cassola and Conrad Borg Manché, whose smart campaigns show the future of Maltese politics does not have to be duopolistic.
No matter which party or candidate you support, a narrowing of the gap between the two parties can only be a good thing for individuals and pressure groups.
The larger the gap, the easier it is for the government to ignore certain issues. Risking losing 1,000 votes out of 40,000 is one thing, risking losing 1,000 votes out of 7,000 is something else altogether.
It could also breathe some fire into local politics after years of complacency. The PL government seems to have lost its early energy and become overly cautious, perhaps safe in the knowledge that the electorate is heavily on their side. The PN focused more on maintaining internal peace than proposing a better vision for Malta, perhaps out of a sense of resignation that the electorate will stick with PL, come what may.
But now the electorate has sent a powerful message that will reverberate across the political spectrum.
Malta finally has an Opposition again and things could be about to get a whole lot more interesting…
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