Allow me to start off with a sad duty, though I carry it out with pleasure. I want to pay tribute to an old friend who left us, poignantly around Christmas and his birthday.

The PN has always changed, is changed and will continue to change- I.M. Beck

Bobby Engerer was (I hate the past tense) one of nature’s gentlemen, someone who seemed unchanged in the 40-odd years I’ve known him. He was one of those friends – we all have them – with whom you don’t have much contact but who you value nonetheless, who always has a friendly smile when you come across each other, as if no time had passed since the last time you did.

To Pat and the boys, no words are enough: we’ll miss him but nowhere near as much as you will, obviously.

And so here we are: poised at the dawn of the campaign that will see Joseph Muscat trip merrily up the stairs to Castille, his dream realised, or Lawrence Gonzi confirmed as Prime Minister, after having guided the country through a number of crises with a sure touch, the nipping and whelping of undeserving little pups notwithstanding.

Many - for reasons known only to them and the chemical reactions that turn the wheels in their cerebellum - see Gonzi as a good reason not to vote for the PN. Precisely why this is I don’t see but there you have it, such people labour (excuse the pun) under the impression that there has to be a change. They look back, make fatuous remarks and point fingers, ignoring the PN’s record in government, closing their eyes to the stark reality that Labour’s policies are just so much hot air, as at the time of writing.

They ignore the equally stark reality that the PN has always changed, is changed and will continue to change, evolving to meet the country’s needs, unlike the other lot, who quite obviously want a change simply to have their own turn at the wheel and for no other reason.

To be fair, the introduction of Simon Busuttil at the deputy leadership level has given the strongest of strong signals that the process of change is continuous and dynamic. That it was a strong signal is clear because Muscat - some say that taking a look at the polls moved him to it, others say it’s because he instinctively copies what the PN does - dumped one of his deputy leaders (so far, it’s only one, anyway) and drafted in Louis Grech, who is not a million miles from being indistinguishable from Busuttil, for all that he’s a tad and a bit older.

It’s going to be interesting to see what Grech is going to do for Labour. Thus far, we have one policy in place: water and electricity rates are going to be lowered. We have not yet been told how, that’s what’s going to hit the newsstands on Monday, but a little bird, in the form of a loud-mouthed star candidate who was being a bit too smug about his access to the inner circle for his own good, was heard to twitter something about a letter of intent already being in place, or as good as.

If this goes forward, again from what I hear, the denizens of Marsaxlokk and environs are going to have a rather large floating sarcophagus, on the lines of that Sargas monstrosity, wallowing in their bay.

Is this going to be Labour’s solution to the problem of sticking to their promise about bringing down utility rates? A cosy little arrangement with Sargas, which strikes me as being very much a ‘suck it and see’ affair since the technology is hardly proven? Or are they simply going to ride on the interconnector project, which will be brought online on schedule and make our power costs less dependent on the price of fuel, which, given our tiny buying power, is what drives the price, whether we like it or not?

As for other policies, well, we have none in evidence, unless you count adopting the last Budget, which would be very much a lazy man’s way out: “vote for us, we’ll do what the other bunch were going to do anyway”. Given the people who are running Labour, I wouldn’t really be that surprised if this came to be their policy, when you boil it down, it’s not as if they all can’t walk away from the wreck if it becomes a wreck.

They only want to be boss because it’s their turn to be boss, the way they see it.

Apparently, I missed a pretty impressive bit of telly, over the holidays. None other than Mrs Joseph Muscat was on the box, telling her breathlessly impressed viewers that she wouldn’t be doing any plastic surgery any time soon because she didn’t want to look like a cow - I wonder what any ladies of a certain size who were watching thought of that piece of diplomacy from ‘She Who Would Be Mrs PM’.

I wouldn’t normally comment about politicians’ ladies but if they disport themselves all over the place, they become fair game, I suppose. In this vein, did she really say that she finds strolling around her village a bit tiresome because since it has a Labour council, she finds herself duty-bound to report on anything that needs doing? Did she really mean that if there are things that need doing in PN-controlled areas, they can be ignored?

Is this the sort of all-inclu-sive policy that Labour will be espousing?

In the meantime, while we wait with bated breath for that which the parties will be visiting on us come Monday, have a good 2013 – we ended 2012 with an excellent meal at Beppe in the Menqa.

imbocca@gmail.com

www.timesofmalta.com/articles/author/20