Will the abstentionist party win?

Ours is the country with one of the best records in voter turnout, consistently topping the 90 per cent mark. Yet, it is predicted that at the June Euro elections more voters will decide to stay at home instead of using their right to vote. The media report thousands of voting documents still to be collected. So the question is: Will the abstentionist party increase from the already high level of 18 per cent of the last Euro elections? If so, what would its political significance be?

It would certainly not be good news for Joseph Muscat's Labour.

Despite the comfortable win obtained at the 2004 Euro elections over the Nationalist Party - 48.4 per cent to 39.7 per cent - the then Malta Labour Party led by Alfred Sant was not capable to reproduce the same result at the 2008 general election. With a 93 per cent turnout, it was the Nationalists who won with 49.3 per cent of the vote and not Labour.

The Nationalists gained 10 per cent over the Euro elections result whereas Labour practically re-mained stuck where they were. It must also be said that the "appreciation" vote on the part of Nationalist voters who voted Alternattiva Demokratika (nine per cent) went back home at the general election.

In 2008, the abstention factor, amounting to an increase of three per cent of the total electorate, made all the difference to the final result since, if even a small number of them voted and voted Labour, there would have been a change in government.

All this shows that the EU issue was an important factor to the abstention party at the 2008 election. Dr Sant's Labour sounded more and more eurosceptic, not to say EU hostile, the closer the 2008 election day got. The less could they hide their antipathy to the EU, to the euro. In fact, while the Nationalists lost 2.45 per cent from the 2003 elections, Labour increased their vote only by 1.28 per cent.

A number of voters who might have been prepared to change in favour of Labour were clearly unwilling to risk what was won in regard to the EU by voting for such a fudged MLP message on the EU. The rest is history.

And, as history will record, the voters were right, as always. Dr Sant has been making it more than plainly clear that, had he become Prime Minister, he would have steered Malta into an Eurosceptic course, reflecting Labour's inbred opposition to the EU and the euro.

Where does this leave Dr Muscat's Euro campaign? He has not taken his first golden opportunity to make the decisive historic break with the past on the EU. Some Euro candidates seem prepared for the change. Marlene Mizzi seems the most "gang ho" on the EU, openly declaring she voted yes at the referendum. However, others still have a long way to go to convince the electorate that they did so too. Edward Scicluna missed a memorable occasion to put his record straight during this campaign.

And allow me to be frank and sincere, and it is only an opinion: I cannot by the life of me sincerely bring myself to think Sharon Ellul Bonici would vote "Yes 4 EU" even today!

Not to mention the PR debacle of the sitting Labour Euro MPs at the recent European Parliament's vote on illegal immigration promoted by Nationalist MEP Simon Busuttil .

Only Dr Muscat's extreme caution to avoid colliding with the opposing souls of the Labour Party can explain the lack of any EU vision in its electoral manifesto, the first under his leadership. No mention of the process of EU integration or the Lisbon Treaty. The European vision is practically sacrificed to local issues, which could easily make of it an electoral manifesto for a general election.

Let us be clear: neither is the abstentionist party any consolation for the Nationalist Party. The signs of voter fatigue among a small but determining sector of the Nationalist electorate is there for all to see. But up till the last election, the Nationalists, counting on the Lawrence Gonzi factor, managed to portray themselves the more credible of the two parties where it counted most.

Dr Muscat might feel with some justification that time is on his side, however the Leader of the Opposition should eye any abstention vote with much more concern than the Prime Minister.