Oh, how painful it really is

Well, there you have it: we've had an election and we're the best in Europe. At turning out for elections, that is, like we didn't know that already. Whether we're the best in Europe at electing the right people is another matter, though, frankly, we're better at it than the Brits, given their choices.

Just as the Left virtually Europe-wide was getting its political donkey (one has to be careful what language to use, since this is a family newspaper) kicked, what passes for the Left here was out celebrating for all the world as if they'd been elected to the highest of high offices, rather than having had three, and maybe four, eventually, blokes elected to a dwindling bunch of like-minded folk at the largest talking shop in the world.

To be sure, Labour had - and still has - every right to celebrate and feel smug about its win because win it was, and no amount of spin is going to change that. The Nationalists got themselves well and truly whupped and they didn't even have the consolation of achieving a meaningless draw. In my blog, penned on the day the results came out, I did remark that it's a weird system that gives a party that was 35,000 votes in arrears of its competitor the same number of elected (or almost elected) members, since at the time it looked like the sixth "Lisbon" seat was going the PN's way.

Just as it looked as if John Attard Montalto was going to be left out in the cold and Marlene Mizzi wafted into Brussels. How about that for a fight-back?

Well, things turned out differently and Labour can say that the structure of the electees approximates the votes cast, which is fair enough.

But now that we're in the hot and humid light of day we can take a good long look at the result and think a few thoughts about it.

The Nationalists have to have a darn deep think and take the electorate's message to heart. The prospect of having Labour in government, with Joseph Muscat at the helm, might no longer be enough to get the voters out.

The funny thing about this apathy is that it's usually accompanied by some sort of platitude about how the Nationalists are so arrogant or that they're not doing anything or whatever. In this context, the government was arrogant in sorting out the squatters at Ġnejna, I suppose these people would say, and in the same breath they, or their slightly greener neighbours, would be moaning about how the government never does anything about anything.

Yes, fine, the government, like most governments, is pretty useless and never does get things done, but this generally means that the things that don't get done are the things that we want done for free and without inconvenience.

Harold Wilson was it, who said that we've never had it so good? Probably not, but you get my drift. Just try living in a country where the rule of law has gone out of the window, where the roads don't exist and where there is real poverty and then you might have the right to whine.

That having been said, the PN got right royally creamed and no mistake.

Some soul searching would not go amiss on Labour's side, though. In relative terms, its share of the vote rocketed and it is right to be euphoric but, in real terms, fewer people voted for it than in the general election and it had Alfred Sant at the helm then, not Super Joe.

You could say, in fact, that more people didn't vote for Labour than voted for, but this is a totally spurious and fallacious argument and anyone who makes it should be ridiculed for the rest of his life.

Is it, though? It's a fact that this result in a general election would have led to Labour being in government, which is why the Nationalists carry on whistling in the dark saying that this sort of result would not happen in a general election.

But it is also a fact that - while this result in a general election would have got us Muscat in Castille - Labour lost voters as well. That less of their voters were moved to stay home and not bother than were Nationalists voters is a fact, but crunch the numbers whichever way you crunch the numbers, and you still get a net loss in positive votes for Labour.

This is, of course, certainly no consolation for the Nationalists, who are presumably going around with their heads hung in shame. Yeah, right.

Both parties, too, have to have a think about that small but existent increase in votes for our equivalent of the BNP. Racist xenophobia is a terrible thing to contemplate and both parties were forced to flirt with it because of the perception that reasonable people were worried about immigration to the extent that our obligations as members of the human race were being ignored, but now is the time for both parties to stand up and be counted.

Malta, whoever it is governed by, is not a racist country and it's about time this was made clear.

There's plenty more thinking to be done by other people.

Some thinking has to be done by Alternattiva, for instance, which might finally come to the conclusion that it has flown too close to the flame and been consumed. Azzjoni Nazzjonali have been told, again, that they're superfluous to the country's political requirements, so it's time for them to pack up their tents and leave, methinks.

imbocca@gmail.com, www.timesofmalta.com/blogs