ON THE GLORY ROAD

So there I was, sitting in the car, in the rain, waiting for the missus to do whatever it is she does when buying stuff – it must be a guy thing, I generally walk in to the shop, ask for the thing I want, pay and walk away.

Which might explain why I don’t always get what I want. It must be a guy thing.

Anyway, thanks to the wonders of modern technology, I was able to have a bit of a surf, using my smartphone, which is so smart it actually figured out I was taking it back to the people who sold it to me, as a precursor to flinging it off the nearest cliff, it having stopped doing whatever it was supposed to do with emails just before year’s end. It suddenly started doing whatever it was supposed to do, leading me to the conclusion that perhaps the problem lay in other quarters, not with the beast itself.

Most of the bookmarks I have and use relate to media and news outlets, and L-Orizzont is one of them. Monday’s edition carried an opinion piece by one Saviour Cassar, titled “The Road to Glory” and it was an interesting piece.

His premise was that this is a vital – nay, decisive - year for Labour (no, I won’t call it PL, doesn’t work for me) because of the MEP elections.

Life and death and all manner of emotive stuff was trotted out, presumably for the effect of geeing up Labour’s candidates and making sure that they do a good job. Mr Cassar harked back to the 2004 edition of these particular electoral games and referred to his position then, which seems to have been that those elections were “life or death” for the Labour Party.

This is the first interesting point: if the 2004 MEP elections were “life or death” for Labour and they won those elections (which they did), how come they then died a death in the 2008 General Elections?

What would have happened had they lost the MEP elections, would the party have disbanded and ceased to exist, except as a corpse for burial? So what does “life or death” mean, in the context of the MEP elections. Not a heck of alot, I’d have to say, frankly. Labour won but then lost, so if the 2004 MEP elections gave them something, it may have been life, but not as we know it, Jim.

Mr Cassar went on to deliver a stirring exhortation to all the candidates that will be contesting in Labour’s name, rallying them with slogans and pleas that seem to have something of the desperate within them.

I’m not sure why he’s worrying.

Quite honestly, it’s been a given that Labour will get 3 out of the 5 available slots for quite some time now – it’ll be one year into the PN’s five-year stretch, the economy will still be trundling along towards hell in a handbasket and anyone with even the smallest of tiny axes to grind will be looking to bury it in Gonzi’s figurative neck, an exercise they would be less than eager to do if it meant that Labour would get into real power.

Don’t take my word for it, just take a look at the history of elections over the last couple of decades.

In every poll that mattered, the Nationalists beat Labour, by tons or by ounces, whatever, but they won. In the polls about nothing much in particular, Labour generally got the nod, though even then it wasn’t always the case.

So Labour will probably get the edge, again, this time and, therefore, I have to ask: what, pray, is Mr Cassar so exercised about?

Does he really think that the upcoming MEP election will be such a close-run and important thing that if Gonzi doesn’t prevail, he’ll have to give thought to foregoing the next four years and giving Joe Muscat the keys to Castille?

Or is this a case of Mr Cassar knowing something that we on the outside don’t know?

In other words, are the wheels about to come off the Labour wagon (again) and are they going to prove themselves to be unelectable even now?

From a fervent Nationalist point of view (and from a Labour one, for that matter) every election is an important one and I’ve no doubt both camps will be doing their utmost to put one over the other side, but the rest of us are realists and it is clear that something pretty extraordinary will have to happen to reverse the 2004 result.

If it is – pretty miraculously - reversed, then perhaps Mr Cassar’s prophecy that it will mean the death of Labour will come true, but if it is not, it’s hardly likely to be the end of the world for the PN, because it will not be much of a surprise. In footballing terms, it’s Labour’s to lose: but snatching defeat from the jaws of victory is not a feat they haven’t ever pulled off, when you think about it.