THE VARIOUS ASPECTS of the result of the election of five MEPs yesterday week amount to a salutary demonstration that democracy, defined in its essence to mean the freely expressed will of the people, is alive and well and deporting itself with great vigour in the Maltese Islands. Rarely in any electoral test of public opinion have Maltese voters been as calculated and categorical as on June 12, 2004.

A large chunk of traditional, some even dyed-in-the-wool, supporters of the Nationalist Party, to which the MLP leadership had handed a landslide in the general election of April 2003, which sealed the island's accession to the EU, declared that they were thoroughly dissatisfied, disillusioned and disenchanted with 'their' government.

They did so in two ways: by not picking their ballot papers or picking them, but refraining in droves from casting them; or, if they did go to their polling booth, by spoiling them deliberately to the tune of several thousand, or voting, with grimmer determination, frequently declared openly in advance, for the sole candidate put up by Alternattiva Demokratika.

The Nationalists have not had it so bad in around 40 years. Seeking refuge in the rationalisation that around 90 per cent of those who gave their first preference to the AD candidate on June 12 were Nationalists, and are likely to return to the fold in four years' time at the next general election, will not mitigate the prevailing shock at the manner in which the Nationalist vote has crumbled.

Nationalists who seek backhanded solace in the fact that, with the perception of a Labour victory, Alfred Sant cannot be budged from the Labour leadership, and so could once again be the PN's trump card come 2008, which ought to deliver a Labour victory even if the MLP is led by remote control by a space-tourist sunbathing on the other side of the moon, know they are offering themselves courage and faith, which could prove to be vain faith, and courage vain, as Macaulay put in his Epitaph on a Jacobite.

The MLP basked in the glory of, at long last, seeing the Nationalist foe bite the dust. That is a sight worth celebrating, no doubt about it. Labour could also eke out satisfaction from a one per cent increase in its share of the valid first-count vote. There remains the harsh fact, however, immediately articulated openly by a former Labour leader, that some 15,000 fewer votes went to the party than in the general election. That was just one-third of the slump in the Nationalist vote. But if, by comparison, it was a slower decline, it came hard on the heels of eve-of-polling predictions by the Labour leader that hitherto confused and so reluctant Labour voters would, after all, be flocking to the ballot boxes.

THAT PRONOUNCEMENT missed the mark by a kilometre, if not a mile. But there were two even worse factors which Labour analysts and strategists will have to feed into their realism apparatus, away from the unavoidable hoopla for public consumption, and irresistible spin.

The lesser one is that the Labour share of valid first preferences continued to hover quite below the absolute majority required to register a clear win in a general election. It stuck at the level reached in 1992, and only reversed once, in the famous but short-lived victory of 1996. The harsher factor is that, yesterday week, the electorate did swing massively - but not towards Labour. It shifted towards either indifference (reflected by those who did not collect their voting documents, or stayed at home), or massively to Alternattiva Demokratika and even, remarkably, to minority interest or quaint groups.

That will not cancel the fact that Labour has gained a strong moral boost, and that it should be able to build on that to demonstrate that it can be the alternative government and walk away with the 2008 election, as it should do in the wake of such an overstay in office by the Nationalists.

The immediate reality, though, is not symbolised in the simplistic arithmetical observation that Labour is now the largest party. That was so on June 12. Relating the turnout and the votes received to the potential, particularly in the context of the shambling, staggering decline and tumbling of the Nationalist government, there remains a considerable part of a mountain to climb.

Here too, no one should offer courage and faith, without remembering the warning of vain faith, and courage vain. The odds remain that it should be unthinkable that Labour, having so capriciously forfeited the 2003 general election, will not win the next one. No one should forget, though, to avoid the sin of pride.

It always has a cost, especially when, as yet, there is only pride by default - the adversary gasping to digest the just desserts given to it by the electorate, which has not simultaneously given a great dish to the Opposition, though the third of the electorate that also voted to elect their local councillors did go on to offer a firmer base to Labour, according it an overall majority.

THE highest whoops of triumph over the June 12 EP result have come from Alternattiva Demokratika. The minnow among the political parties has good reason to be pleased that, for once, it became a quite visible fish in the local pond. One fails to see why, however, the EP election result has made even its chairman suspend, one hopes not for long, his normal sobriety and good sense.

It is normal enough to be happy that the AD candidate polled a very decent amount of first preferences, comfortably exceeding the benchmark this columnist had set, half the national quota, and adding to it substantially through inherited preferences. To gloat, as the AD chair did, because neither of the two main parties achieved an absolute majority, is something else.

The practical name of the political game is winning. That is the game AD has joined, once it became a political party. Since it came into being it has won respect for consistency, and for remaining around, despite being abandoned and even attacked by its main founders. Other than for sporadic good results in elections for a few local councils, it has yet to score a political victory.

In part, that is due to the electoral system being heavily loaded against it. Paradoxically, the single transferable vote, which in theory favours pluralism by giving several parties the opportunity to score, works in practice against a young grouping like AD. The STV does not as yet include a threshold - a minimum level of votes which, if gained by a small party, guarantees that the first preferences given to across the multiple constituencies will be added together and, if the total suffices, is converted into a presence of the House of Representatives, even if no seat is won in any one constituency.

That may be presumed to equate in voters minds with 'wasting' their vote, should they opt for AD candidates.

In the June 12 election to the European Parliament, there was a different framework in place. Here was a single constituency, made up of the whole of the Maltese Islands. The threshold was inbuilt in that clear fact - a candidate who acquired a quota 16.7 per cent of the valid votes, even if through inherited preferences, would gain a seat.

AD, with the omens and the odds in its favour, did not achieve that threshold. To be euphoric - understandably - over the number of first preferences garnered, but then to blame the Nationalists, or Labour, for that matter, for not going to continue with their preferences to the AD candidate, is not really an argument that holds water. That is how political parties tend to operate.

Professor John C. Lane, a political scientist who takes a particular interest in Maltese elections, has long argued that a voter, having given preferences to those on his favourite party's list, can in certain circumstances influence the choice of the last candidate to be elected by a competitor party, by continuing with his preferences. That possibility has never been seriously discussed, let alone heeded.

In any event, no party can issue a diktat to those who intend to vote for its candidates to continue to list their preferences for candidates of other parties as well.

This was Alternattiva Demokratika's only chance so far to make a definite breakthrough. It did well to increase support in the EP election, to attract so many of the disgruntled Nationalists. That was a triumph, but does not equate to a real victory, since the first and inherited preferences did not yield a Malta Green MEP.

In summary

* The PN did no worse than it deserved. Its humiliation could have been greater - its share of the votes polled could have fallen further;

* the MLP fell well short of doing as well as it should have done and, surely, had hoped for - it remained well short of a 50 per cent-plus-one absolute majority, despite the auspicious circumstances;

* the AD did well, but not nearly as well as they had promised themselves, though it was battling in ideal circumstances.

IT WAS indeed a salutary democratic result, chastening for all three parties. That was emphasised by the fourth and perhaps important observation proposed by the overall outcome of the election of June 12.

No fewer than one in every five voters could not bother going to vote for any of the parties (or the independent candidates, either, but they should be presumed to have attracted the full support their different stances, honest, idiosyncratic or abhorrent as they were, they could have hoped to muster).

Despite the massive campaigning, the media barrage, knocking on doors, tons of publicity material pushed into letter boxes, around 20 per cent of those entitled and able to vote collectively told the parties to go and take a running jump at their antics.

Is that really significant, considering that average turnout in the EU was merely double the percentage that stayed away in Malta, and in Slovakia was - astonishingly - less, with just about 17 per cent trudging to vote for their clutch of MEPs?

Those who find easy ways of escape through self-alienation may say that Malta's democratic absentees were not a significant factor - they will troop up when the real battle, a general election, comes around. I believe that would be a naïve and dangerous conclusion.

If we truly value democracy, there should be a key question overriding that of which party won, which lost - why have so many Maltese voters switched off and become so antipathetic to the whole political class that they binned their precious right to influence who is to represent Malta in the European?

The political parties should be asking that question of themselves. The answer lies in not leaving it just to them to give it.