D Day looms. Nearer and nearer gets the day of reckoning when we will all face the ballot papers, alone, armed only with a pencil in a claustrophobic partition. Hesitantly we will place our first preference vote for the candidate whom we feel we can trust and whose ideas we feel are in synch with ours and then the rest - if there is the rest, of course - will be done in a flash: 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 etc! What a relief! Phew! Then all we have to do is wait and bite our nails. Those unfortunates who still smoke will have a field day while the fridge will be raided to its very dregs. Tensions rise as the ballot papers are collected in the middle of the night to be taken to their final destination. Then, a brooding silence will lie over Malta and Gozo like a stifling blanket for the next 24 hours or thereabouts until we get to know who will be steering the good ship Malta for the next five years.
For weeks on end we have heard nothing but political braggadocio, mudslinging, promises and more promises. We will have heard the pronouncements of the opinionated, of the floaters, of the diehards and got thoroughly muddled by it all. We will have had our incidents, both pleasant and unpleasant. We will have had a few revelations; young aspiring politicians whose mouths have been unhardened by the unforgiving pressures of a party's bearing rein and in whose eyes the light of idealism still shines, genuine and strong. Those idealists will always have my preference.
The two great power blocs that have in one way or another determined our fate for the last 60 years are determined to hang on to it at all costs, and the competition is keen and cutthroat. Of the two one can reason that it is far better to vote into office the devil one knows rather than the one that one doesn't, especially when the slogan of that other is "a plan for a new beginning". I would have possibly bought "a new beginning" alone, but if and when the MLP is elected into office it still has to draw up its plan to start we will be thrown light years back. As I have said before, and I will say it again, Malta cannot afford to be put on hold while the MLP incoming Cabinet ponders about how it can reconstruct what there is already into something that resembles a new beginning and regurgitate it into a plan. In the same way as those who destroyed their cash registers in 1996 and were hoisted up the waterspout with the introduction of CET, I would advise those who anticipate a Labour victory to hold their horses until the dust clears and the master plan is revealed - if ever.
The electorate is supposed to be king. By March 10 we will know how many of us floaters shifted one way or another. We have been denied, by both big parties, the luxury of voting for any of the small ones for the simple reason that it has been made impossible for them to gain a seat. Even if any of them do get a seat there is little or nothing they can do about it as both parties seem to detest them and, by the way, the feeling is mutual. The most awful part of the scenario is that should we opt to vote for any of the small parties, our votes will eventually find their way to augment the allotment of one of the big ones. This is what we, the royal electorate, have been reduced to: puppet monarchs who have to do what they are told, or else!
Last week, AD, just a trifle too late, and, ironically, after AN did, declared itself in favour of gay rights. I was under the impression that AN wished to shift all us gay people into a sort of Theresienstadt where they would be free to express themselves without frightening the horses. Their latest vote-catching pronouncement was therefore nothing short of repugnant. To date, neither of the leviathans has bothered to mention the issue, which, as life becomes more transparent and liberal as opposed to clandestine and hypocritical, is there staring all and sundry in the face.
Although on a programme called Sr82thepoint on One TV last week Joe Saliba expressed his solidarity and all that jazz with the plight many gay people find themselves in, as Jason Micallef said, the increasing proportion of gay people in Malta want more than words! Not that the MLP have even whispered anything about it officially. The PN has done nothing to address this issue but has gone a step further to being anti-gay, so much so that its MEPs are regarded as nothing short of reactionary in their negative stance about gay issues in the hemicycle.
As for divorce I may as well give up. Alfred Sant said that he will consider it should there be a popular movement to implement it. I wonder what he means by that. I leave it to the hundreds if not thousands of couples trapped in an anomalous situation to fight this one for themselves while I would prefer to battle on for something that concerns me more closely. Gay rights will happen, provided that enough pressure is put on the government.
Despite the fact the AD has written to inform me that coalition with the PN has not been ruled out but was declared to be "not an issue", whatever that may mean, I remain unconvinced. Not that I would ever imagine AD allying itself with the MLP, however the future of Malta within the EU still lies in the balance and I, for one, can never, ever, with a clear conscience, jeopardise this.
Dr Sant did not reply to the questions about the EU put to him at the momentous University meeting last week. Unless he does, unless he binds himself to work within the EU as we are now, I simply cannot ever vote for him or his party, much as I would like to.
EU membership, my friends, overrides any other issue, even that of voting in yet again the political extension of the Curia. I cannot be instrumental in voting in a Prime Minister whose interpretation of referendum results was nothing short of bizarre! Had he declared himself then to respect the will of the majority he would probably be PM today! It is possible that first-time voters were too young when this happened, but it is their parents' duty to remind them.
Once we remain within the EU, despite the quixotic voting by our PN MEPs on gay issues, there is a sporting chance that these rights will eventually come to be implemented.
Outside the EU we will once again become a rudderless floating maverick that Europeans will shun; we will be seen as a possible hotbed of Islamic terrorism and a pesky little place planted in no man's land that caused no end of trouble as it extricated itself from the EU. That is not for me, despite what Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici's CNI says. This alternative is too horrible to even contemplate.
As the parties prostitute themselves to be all things to all men before we find ourselves alone in that polling booth bowed down under the crushing decision of how Malta will be ruled over the next five-year term, we will continue to hear all sorts of promises and pledges being made. I do hope that someone is making a record of them and will be posting them on internet for us to keep handy like the irwiegel which I retain on my desktop for future reference.
Whoever is voted into office on March 8 will have to face the issues of divorce, gay rights and abortion. Issues that no party considers to be vote-catching enough to go making pre-election promises about but which will, sure as eggs are eggs, like the ghost of Banquo, appear to rebuke them when they least expect it.
kzt@onvol.net