Electoritis!

Oh dear! Oh dear! Oh dear! What an awful kafuffle! I have been feeling increasingly confused and perplexed since this wretched electoral campaign started. I have spoken to goodness knows how many people and corresponded via e-mail and Facebook with countless others and I am as befogged and frustrated as I was before. I am sure that I am not alone.

This morning, Friday, is cut-off day for my Tuesday article. Working off steam in the National Pool, my waterproof MP3 playing a wonderful piano concerto by Michael Tippett, as I plied up and down the 50 metres of warmish water that has enabled me to swim without a break since September, I kept thinking about how I am going to vote next Saturday and despite the gorgeous music and the sun on my back, I simply could not hack it.

"I am a complete floater," I said, speaking to myself rather like Gollum in Lord of the Rings as I splashed about quite unnecessarily at the end of an ambling breast-stroke. "I have never ever been one before!" I was rather pleased with myself at that. At least my political identity crisis was partially over. That all important label "floater" had been applied and I was no longer in Limbo about what I was or am. I attempted a celebratory fast freestyle sprint and lost my earphones. Poor Tippett faded in the rippling water.

"The son of a duck is a floater," I added irrelevantly as I remembered some Arabian proverb the meaning of which I have never quite fathomed! That's what happens when you read too much and indiscriminately. Your mind becomes like a box-room full of useful objects like brooms and buckets and the family Christmas tree but also full of the most alarming rubbish that you cannot bring yourself to throw away.

But I digress.

I got out of the pool and had yet another argument with yet another person as to how a number one vote given to any other party but the PN is a vote for the MLP. This has been going on for weeks now and despite the fact that neither of the big parties have included things that affect me closely and personally, like the setting up of a Museum of Modern Art or the establishment of gay rights, the lesser of the two evils and the overriding concern is that I would rather continue to ride on the positive economy of a Gonzi Administration with all its attendant baggage than the uncertainty of the doom and gloom the MLP will conjure up.

I left the National Pool and went to Doris to buy some fish for lunch and met yet another two people who spoke to me about my Voting With A Gun To My Head article. I should and must vote AD without a doubt, they reiterated. They knew, and I know, that all my sentiments, all my reasoning pinpointed to that conclusion and yet... and yet, my logic dictated that in that way I would be, by default, voting in the MLP especially as if neither of the two parties obtain 50 per cent or over of the first count votes, the pre-1987 system of seats would place the government in the lap of the MLP as despite it having fewer votes it will have more seats!

"And what's so wrong about the MLP," I mused as all flushed I got back into the car with my tuna steaks. "Nothing very much apart from the fact that its leader is not trustworthy and has shown that he has a penchant of taking pig-headed decisions like the one he took over the referendum. He is also prone to making sweeping statements like the one he made about renegotiating aspects of our Accession Treaty which Brussels has already pooh-poohed in no uncertain terms.

To get back to the MLP and its intellectual but quixotic and dictatorial leader I feel that there is plenty of very good material within his party that should have by now taken the reins of leadership from him long ago. A true New Labour, shorn of all the ragtag and bobtail, the type that enjoys inflammatory tirades from rabble-rousers like Joe Debono Grech, and the ill judged remarks about other people's DNA from Charles Mangion and the Florence Foster Jenkins-like singing of Michael Falzon will mean that a more sober and serious generation of MLP politicians, untainted by the excesses of the past, are ready to steer the party to form a sober and serious government. The likes of a Carmelo Abela or a Gavin Gulia, for instance, would immediately appeal to me and many who, like me, believe that a party should not be in power for longer than two terms without becoming unenlightened despots. To achieve this, the opposition has to utilise those 10 years in renewing itself if not reinventing itself; something the MLP under the marshal's baton of Alfred Sant has singularly failed to do in 20!

Lawrence Gonzi, on the other hand, is indefatigable, ubiquitous and omnivorous as he shows no hesitation at all about going for the jugular when cornered. His energy and his enthusiasm are infectious. It is he who is propelling the entire gonzipn campaign single-handed with the support of that proverbial woman who supports a successful man. Kate Gonzi in her blue pashmina is a fixture at his side and on his website; a Prime Minister's wife of the type that we never had before. This is the public front of the PN as the rest of the gang is taking a dickie-seat not even a back seat in this campaign. The PN campaign is reminding me of the US Presidential elections rather than governmental ones. It is as if Dr Gonzi is screening if not obliterating his ministers, some of which have become Jurassic Andreotti-like survivors; many of whom have had pasts and who should have bowed out gracefully from the political arena long ago. If only I could vote for Kate half my troubles would be solved.

So then there's AD waiting in the wings with all the terrible scaremongering on the part of the PN that an AD vote equals an MLP government and the complacency of the MLP that bears the theory out. This was not what I had envisaged when I voted yes to join Europe. I was bamboozled into thinking that once we were in we would not have these sorts of elections that are fraught with emotion and soul-searching doubts. In fact, I find these particular elections even more fraught than the past ones. AD have made all the right noises about all the things I care deeply about and which affect me personally and, yet, the possibility of their doing anything about it remains a pie in the sky. Risking a number one vote for AD is, I have been told, numerical folly so that always leaves number two, doesn't it? Patrick Attard, if only I could vote for you!

Therefore, I am condemned to remain as frustrated and perplexed as I was before. Despite the delirium of my electoritis, I managed to get home and, by and by, started this article off hoping that if I reasoned the whole situation out on paper with you dear reader, so to speak, I may have found myself shouting Eureka! like Archimedes in his bath! But, no, I am afraid I will have to deprive you of the spectacle of KŻT running up and down Lapsi Street in the altogether as I am still totally undecided and still floating aimlessly and listlessly about just like my rubber duck and his son, the floater!

kzt@onvol.net