'Ministers were not interested'

Ministers and MPs should have played a bigger role in the Nationalist Party's European Parliament electoral campaign, according to candidate Edward Demicoli.

"I was disappointed by their lack of interest and absence in the campaign. Under the prevailing circumstances I think the party ran a very decent campaign," Mr Demicoli told The Sunday Times yesterday.

His observation was also reflected by fellow candidates Alan Deidun and Roberta Metsola Tedesco Triccas, both of whom failed to make it.

"The party was let down by the government, or rather the decisions and actions of some ministers," Dr Deidun said.

According to Ms Metsola Tedesco Triccas, the Nationalist Party was only reacting to the agenda set by the Labour Party throughout the EP election campaign.

However, she admitted that with Labour embarking on a consistent campaign to discredit the government, it was always going to be difficult for the PN.

The Nationalist candidates had to "continuously defend government's performance", which meant that their "positive message was not getting through," she said.

"I believe in the last two weeks of the campaign we managed to limit the damage in view of the dismal results polls were giving us at the start of the campaign. However, it was too late in the day," Ms Metsola Tedesco Triccas said.

On the other hand, both Mr Demicoli and Dr Deidun said that the situation was always going to be difficult for the PN and doing anything differently would not have changed the result.

"The campaign was fought on national issues and there wasn't much else we could do," Dr Deidun said.

The PN candidates have refused - publicly at least - to criticise the decision to push Simon Busuttil during the campaign and basically appoint his team to run the campaign. However, they did say that the third seat could have been lost precisely because of that strategy.

Billed as one of the PN's high-flyers before the election, Ms Metsola Tedesco Triccas said the PN could have easily won the third seat, had voters been aware of the fact that to be elected candidates still had to have a substantial number of first count votes.

She said that nobody expected Dr Busuttil "to do so well" despite the widespread feeling that he was always the PN's runaway candidate.

"People did not realise that by giving their first preference to Simon, their second to David and their third preference to me, this was not going to translate automatically into three seats for the PN. Few people realised that for us to take get seats we needed three candidates who started the race with a substantial number of first count votes," she said.

However, she harbours no rancour for the party's strategy to push Dr Busuttil.

"He is not controversial and he was always the party's winning card. It would have been a mistake not to use him if he is the primary vote puller," she said.

Mr Demicoli said that given how things were shaping up in the months and weeks before the election the party had to push Dr Busuttil's candidacy.

"The strategy cost us the third seat but with a 35,000 vote difference between both parties I would have been uncomfortable with a result that saw the PN and the PL get three seats each," Mr Demicoli said.

Dr Busuttil increased his first count tally by 10,000 votes since five years ago but Mr Casa and Ms Metsola Tedesco Triccas slugged it out all the way, with the latter being eliminated as Labour's candidates progressed in tandem.

Ms Metsola Tedesco Triccas evidently was not satisfied with her personal result but was more concerned with the 35,000 vote difference with the PL, insisting that the defeat required a deep analysis.

"What definitely needs to change is the way the party addresses the complaints, the needs and the enquiries of its people. The candidates had to deal with issues that should have been dealt with by ministers, their secretariats, the departments or at least the customer complaints mechanism of the PN," she said, echoing the words of former ministers Jesmond Mugliett and Ċensu Galea.

ksansone@timesofmalta.com