The interpretations that will be given to last Saturday's local council elections will be as various as the political parties. They need not be correct, but perhaps it is best to start with a few facts.
Twenty-two localities were up for grabs. The Nationalist Party threw 121 candidates into the fray, the Malta Labour party 110, Alternattiva Demokratika, 7. The final outcome would see 140 councillors in place. The locality with the largest electorate was Mosta (14,136), the smallest San Lawrenz (548).
102,294 were eligible to vote. 7,329 opted out. This left 94,965 to contest the elections. In the event, 68 per cent - 14 percentage points less than in 2004, which was a sort of special issue year, and four less than in 2001 - chose to exercise their right to do so. At the end of the day the MLP garnered 53.2 per cent of the vote, the Nationalist Party 43.9 per cent, Alternattiva Demokratika 2.2 per cent and independent candidates 0.8 per cent.
There is no doubt that the Labour Party emerged as a clear winner in this contest. The results will not please the Nationalist Party; less pleasing for it will be the loss of Mosta, Gzira and Xaghra to Labour. This is not the first time that Labour created shock-waves. In 2002 the party wrested Dingli, St Julians and St Paul's Bay from the Nationalist Party with swings amounting to 10 per cent, 11 per cent and seven per cent respectively.
The Labour angle is that last Saturday voters turned out to signal that they wanted a change of government. But this was Labour's reaction in 2002. It lost the general election the following year. That of the Nationalist Party is that the elections were local affairs and voters were showing their preference on a local level, a tribute to the voters who were mature enough to recognise the role of local councils within the democratic framework.
But this may be a trifle pat. Alternattiva Demokratika trumpeted its performance in Munxar, where it collected 11.7 per cent of the vote - in numbers this amounts to around 125 votes; but it performed well in Swieqi and Attard, too.
At a deeper, and if true, more disturbing level, Labour is claiming that the swing towards it is a consequence in part of Nationalist Party supporters casting their vote in its favour. There does not seem to be any solid justification for this claim. It may be more correct to say that Labour's aggressive campaign made certain that its core vote behaved like one - whatever the weather conditions.
Nor is it immediately obvious that the supporters of the Nationalist Party stayed away merely because they were lackadaisical, blasé about the importance that should be given to this level of election. Perhaps some did, but this cannot truthfully be said for all the abstentions - about whom, incidentally, we do not have an accurate profile as to their political loyalties.
Having said which, it is clear that the Labour Party's reactions to its victory would have been abnormal had these not included one which asserted that the elections reflected a desire for change.
No less abnormal was the Nationalist Party's decision to put a brave face on things and to treat the matter as a local affair. If a political party does not do this in times of adversity it does not deserve to be one. And Alternattiva Demokratika was similarly normal when it expressed its satisfaction for the way things had gone.
The problem for each of them is that they know, in their heart of hearts, that neither of them is telling the whole truth. Last Saturday's result cannot be extrapolated to the national level; nor can it be totally divorced from it. This provides food for thought for all three.