The eeriest political campaign in recent memory comes to an end today. Campaigns all have their share of the gory and the glory. But this one has been remarkable for the low quotient of glory.

This electoral campaign has been remarkable for the low quotient of glory

It’s been eerie because many experienced hands feel they can’t quite trust their gut about Sunday’s result. Eerie because of the unprecedented proportion that refuses to declare its intention to pollsters.

Eerie because, despite the hard-fought campaign, it left so many people, including those determined to vote, unmoved. Eerie because, if it’s a Labour landslide, that hasn’t been seen in a while.

Eerie because if there’s an upset, who would have thought?

Attempting to explain the eeriness, many have blamed fatigue, given the length of the campaign. I doubt that’s a good explanation. The campaign was made up of three different mini campaigns rather than one long one.

The first two weeks featured Labour’s attempt to blitzkrieg the Nationalist Party with its energy proposal. It may have seemed like a PN ambush but it was really the battle for Leningrad – the PN was trying to hold its position in the polls and not be wiped off the pollsters’ radar.

Next came the fortnight of electoral promises, which came across as a furious Christmas sale. It wasn’t quite that but voters were right to pick up that they were being targeted as consumers segmented into niche groups.

This was followed by the Quentin Tarantino tribute festival – two weeks in which scandals, accusations and libel suits flew as widely as one of the film director’s signature shoot-outs.

For all the complications, however, the campaign has raised just three basic questions.

First, a double-headed question concerning energy. Are both energy plans feasible in the way presented?

If no, can we afford failure? If yes, which is more sustainable – Labour’s plan to fix a special affordable price for us for 10 years or the Nationalists’ plan to build the infrastructure that would give us gas prices at a par with the price paid by the rest of Europe? The second question concerns the scandals. The issue was never a matter of politicians who are bad men versus those who are good. Big sprawling organisations, like political parties, corporations or Churches, often have to face this dilemma when wrongdoing is uncovered within it: how to defend the organisation’s interest while also defending the greater good?

The question for voters in this election is: which political party would you trust to take the decision that you would want it to take? Such dilemmas will continue to arise.

The final question concerns that pervasive feeling that throughout this campaign we have all been targeted as consumers. I believe it’s this, more than any other factor, which has led to campaign fatigue.

Consumerism has its pleasures but not the same sense of achievement that being part of a historical election does, which is why all parties have, explicitly or implicitly, turned to history making. And the basic question is: is the history they’re offering a consumer spectacle – like the pleasure of being present at Woodstock in 1968 or in Chicago watching Barack Obama claim victory in 2008 – or real, meaningful history?

In a banal sense, whoever wins on Saturday, history will have been made. Labour would overcome its losing streak, the PN would win a record fourth election in a row, Alternattiva would elect an MP. But all this is history for the book of lists.

What about real history, the kind that affects the tissue of our lives? My advice is to beware of any promise that makes you think you are in control of your own destiny. That it’s your vote that will make real history.

If there’s one thing that history shows it is that we are not in control. History is an unfolding drama, full of unanticipated crises, in which our ability to hold on to values and to create new ones matters but only because they give us orientation in a world no one quite trained us for.

In this election, history matters not because of what we decide we want to do but because of what’s going to be thrown at us, the gory crises, in the next five years.

From within Maltese society, the consequences of demographic imbalances and reorganising welfare. State and society will need to change responsibly.

From within Europe, the consequences of a deepening economic crisis and of balancing budgets and harmonising action.

From within the nearby Arab world, the instability caused by the political and growing economic crises.

In other words, history matters not because we need history makers but because we need scenario planners. People who can make rapid sound judgements in the face of the unexpected, the unprecedented and the unknown. The history waiting for us round the corner isn’t about the power and the glory. It’s about the gory, north and south of us.

Our choice on Saturday is not about choosing the leaders we think will change the nature of history, who will choose, on our behalf, the history we want to be part of. That’s fantasy.

It’s about using our best judgement to choose the leaders who, faced with the unexpected, which history will surely throw at them, are likely, in their turn, to make the best judgements on our behalf.

ranierfsadni@europe.com