Lead out the electoral elephants

I keep having conversations about the election in the most unconventional settings. Last week I was waylaid at the supermarket checkout by the man with the defrosting salmon. Later on at the petrol station, the pump attendant winked at me. Since my jeans and top get-up weren't the kind of attire to attract wolf-whistles and lascivious winks, I looked at him quizzically. It turned out he had read some of my articles and wanted me to know that he wouldn't be voting for the PN or MLP either. We talked till the drivers behind me started honking.

Then yesterday, my mobile phone started to beep furiously as a text message from a Nationalist friend dropped into my inbox. "U r rite about pn" it read "but u don't talk about mlp or d danger of sant if gets in".

There it was. The accusation that keeps cropping up. There's an elephant in the room and I'm wilfully ignoring it. This particular elephant, of course, is the prospect of the Labour Party winning because there are voters who have always voted for the PN, but who don't want to do so again and wouldn't dream of voting Labour. They intend to vote for Alternattiva Demokrattika this time round.

According to the increasingly panicked PN people, voting for AD is an act of grave irresponsibility, because your vote is being subtracted from "their" traditional voting haul. Moreover, if there aren't enough votes to elect an AD candidate, then those green votes are "wasted", Labour will be bowled into power and with Labour comes Sant. Ah, "Alfred Sant" - the name that causes all right-minded people to break into a cold sweat or to race to the polling booths to avert national disaster.

The supreme PN tool: "Vote for us, or else you get Sant and we all know what that means". And the electorate are supposed to be pragmatic, concede that there could possibly be no outcome worse than Sant, and trot off obediently to return the PN to power.

This scene plays itself out whenever there's an election, and till now it has always proved to be the PN's ace card. I say "till now" because in the past there have always been overarching issues which have required the electorate to give a resounding defeat to the political party which opposed EU accession, for instance. Now that issue is safely out of the way, and there is no realistic prospect of losing our membership status, it's a whole new ball game. Here's why.

Apart from the core PN and MLP supporters who will vote for their party come what may, people usually choose to support a party because they think that it is the best vehicle to further their aims. They will opt for the party they identify with. They will consider the record of that party, its achievements, its bad apples and the way these were lobbed out - or retained to corrupt the rest.

Another issue which enters the equation is whether that party has kept its promises and whether it has lived up to expectations. As the years roll by, and the broken promises add up, hot issues are permanently put on the backburner, cowardly compromises made and there is no realistic prospect of change, voters make their mind up not to trust the same politicians who have been taking them for granted for so long.

Like elephants which are reputed to have very good memories, some voters never forget. And their dark memories are not restricted to the dark 1980s under Old Labour or the shambolic two years of Sant's ­premiership.

Voters will also remember that they have been living under a Nationalist administration for 20 years now and they will not forget the disappointments which these years have brought.

They find it hard to dispel the memories of their home town or village being turned into a permanent construction site. Ditto the countryside. Whatever former Labour Minister Lorry Sant kicked off when he was around has been carried on in recent years. This will figure in voters' collective memory. So will the lack of enforcement with regard to big party donors.

The Prime Minister finds time to meet football teams at Castille but not to pass legislation requiring political parties to disclose who their donors are. There is foot-dragging when it comes to observing EU regulations. It seems that the Nationalist government enjoys leaving it to the eleventh hour to fall in line with the standards which we voted for - the decision about spring hunting this week is a case in point. The removal of departure tax and amendment of registration tax will probably also take place just in time to avoid fines being imposed.

These issues have registered on voters' collective memories and they want them to be addressed. They have no high hopes of the situation taking a turn for the better if Sant becomes Prime Minister. But they have as much confidence (or as little of it) in this administration. Many people have grown tired of waiting for a genuine change to take place. They resent being told to vote for a party which feels that it is entitled to their vote because it says that the other party is worse. The supreme arrogance of this sense of entitlement is not lost on them.

That's why this time more people will feel free to vote for a third party such as AD. The people who are squawking about such a decision as being a "wasted" vote, should blame the two major parties who cooked up the electoral laws not third party voters.

The third party votes might very well add up and breach the major party duopoly. Or they will be the most potent form of protest vote registered against both the PN and the MLP. Either option is infinitely preferable to the two-party status quo shored up by their unknown donors.

cl.bon@nextgen.net.mt