Did you say watershed election?

You find the Malta Labour Party too Eurosceptic to represent your views in the European Parliament. You want to unleash the Spanish Inquisition on the government's backside. So a vote for Alternattiva Demokratika would be a new way of doing politics, right? Alas, no.

There are several good reasons for voting for Arnold Cassola (and a few good ones for not voting for him, too). The major one, however, is that it enables you to play the old game of political blackmail. Up till now, whenever the political parties morally blackmailed you at election time, you have responded by blackmailing rival candidates within the same party. In this election, you get to blackmail your favourite major party by voting (or threatening to vote) for a candidate from a third party.

It's an added bonus but still the same game. The patron-client system (the honest version) will simply be transferred to Brussels. If Prof. Cassola gets elected there would be no watershed vote for the distinctively European Green political programme because AD has taken that out of the campaign equation.

More than that, AD has conducted the campaign by resorting to the standard tactics of the major parties: mudslinging, silly hyperbole and suspended values.

Here is Harry Vassallo: "The time is ripe for change. The impotence of our rivals to get out of their mudslinging rut is made ever more clear". But in almost the same breath he has accused the major parties of being dinosaurs and "moral dwarves". What a way to get out of the mudslinging rut.

What about hyperbole? A couple of weeks ago Lou Bondí in his column for The Malta Independent on Sunday pointed out that it is one thing to praise Prof. Cassola's indubitable qualifications but quite another to praise him as "head and shoulders" above the competition, as Dr Vassallo keeps doing.

It is not just that Simon Busuttil has been named one of the top 12 experts on the EU who are contesting this election. It is also that a candidate's qualifications to make a good MEP go beyond knowing how the EU works.

They include knowing how Malta works - so the strategic experience acquired by people like Michael Falzon, John Attard Montalto and Louis Grech is important. Since MEPs will be legislators, among other things, a legal background is an important qualification. And since MEPs will also have to consider ethical issues - whether it's war, or EU development aid, or bioethics ranging from food production to human genetic research - then Joe Friggieri's philosophical training is most relevant (just as, for that matter, his work for Malta's culture and the arts will alert him to opportunities to generate economic growth in that sector).

Indeed, one's life experience can be considered a qualification. For example, Joanna Drake's experience as a career woman raising young children is something that is incommensurable with any experience that a single man like Prof. Cassola can bring when scrutinising or proposing relevant legislation.

It does not necessarily make Dr Drake more qualified overall than Prof. Cassola but it does make nonsense of any talk of "head-and-shoulders" superiority.

Of course, Dr Vassallo, chair of a party that has long promoted the value of women's participation in politics, knows this. But in electioneering mode he will not admit it. Like the other political parties, elections have led him to play the game of suspension of values - the freezing out, temporarily, of any values that conflict with the overarching aim.

Where does that leave the voter? In the same old game. If what you want most, above all else, is to punish your favourite major party, then vote for Arnold.

If what you want most is to have the most effective representation in the EP, then you need to keep in mind that the Green share of the seats in the EP is set to go below the current six per cent - because the Greens are weak in the new member states.

Did Dr Vassallo tell you that? Yes, once, while talking about the self-sacrifice of the Greens. Then the campaign proper started and he kept quiet. Do I blame him? No. But is his holier-than-thou attitude justified?

ranierfsadni@europe.com