As the election campaign trundles towards a climax, it is good to note that, at least up to now, it has all been quite quiet. Popular moods at election time have cooled down from the white hot tensions that prevailed during the last decades of the 20th century and arguably up to the last election. The exception might be when mass meetings are held but, luckily, even here, though crowds in attendance are still huge, the potential for verbal and physical violence has dissipated. What has not changed is the array of networks and social alliances still mobilising their commercial and communications power in favour of the PN.


Change the real issue

The real issue in this campaign, as I have long said, is change: Does one want it or not? All other issues... including the coalition "controversy"... are subthemes in the wider canvas set by the issue of change. Gonzipn seems to be saying: "Yes, but" to change. They have moved to a strategy intended to persuade citizens to vote for the caretaker Prime Minister so that, if elected, he can nominate a "new" Cabinet. This is puzzling because he has worked closely with the same people for the last 12 years, as PN secretary general, as deputy PM, and as PM, during which he gave them his full, indeed blind, confidence. Why promise to fire them now?


Real growth

Labour's proposals for change revolve around the Plan For A New Beginning. It was built during four years of patient consultations and discussions with wide swathes of people and representative organisations. Gonzipn sympathisers have busily derided theplan as vacuous, while their "policy makers" just as busily plundered the plan of ideas and proposals. A basic premise of the plan is that we have to jack up real economic growth on a sustainable basis up to four to six per cent per annum. We need such growth in order to change out of the present mode of stagnation for the many and good times for the few. Gonzipn spokesmen say either that this is pie in the sky or that the economy under their guidance is already achieving these growth rates. Discerning voters will decide according to their own experience.


Better use

I get asked: How can an annual 4 - 6 per cent real growth rate be achieved by the economy? In part reply to this question, there is the need to make better use of national assets which are being badly or insufficiently utilised and to make good use of national assets which are not used at all. Through regional development plans, Labour intends to mobilise human and financial resources which will be geared to bring such assets back to life, ensuring good returns for the country at large by way of new jobs, investments, profits, new opportunities for small business enterprises and better protection for our natural and historic heritage.


'Proof'

Many people spoke to me in past months about instances of official abuse and corruption. In the main, only the opposition speaks out publicly about this. Media representatives insist on their independent credentials and shy away from such issues, asking for "proof". Given the widespread allegations being made "privately", their remit should have been to investigate what is going on rather than expect the opposition to provide "proof". Nobody bothered to follow up on the story of how Minister Ninu Zammit secured a fat cheque for over Lm60,000 as compensation for land the government had taken from him in the late 1980s, to line up the street in front of his new residence. Elsewhere, the contrary picture prevails, with the opposition picking up on stories carried by the "independent" press.


Favourite tool

Scaremongering has always been the favourite political tool of the PN - pardon me, of gonzipn. Much of it is not trumpeted in the media or in public meetings. It is done through face to face contacts, and more recently through e-mails.

Among select groups of voters that have been approached with the message that if Labour is elected they will be treated extremely badly, if not also hanged, drawn and quartered, are: certain family categories; students; Gozitan civil servants; members of the police and the army; workers in the former parastatal units; pensioners; security guards in hospitals; teachers... On and on it goes, no doubt in the belief that some of this hidden spin might work.


Junior lyceums

Gonzipn proclaim doom and gloom over Labour's plans to reform the kindergarten and primary school levels, to bring them in line with the practice in the best performing European countries in the educational sector. Meanwhile, with practically no consultations at all and with everything being done outside the media spotlight, moves are well advanced to dismantle Junior Lyceums and to cancel Junior Lyceum exams. Similarly, moves to put public health services on a payments basis have remained secretly on the agenda since 2004, when the gonzipn Cabinet was presented at its request with documents that showed how this could be done.


Debating the truth

At the end of the now infamous University "debate" for party leaders, I was not whisked away from a side entrance. I just went there to pick up my coat. The fracas at the University was an organised partisan show of intolerance and immaturity, true, but it did not amount to a riot. I left from the main entrance, walked to the University bookstore and bought myself a book which I had intermittently shopped for over a number of years and finally found. Ironically, given what had just happened during the "debate", its title is Truth And Method.

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