As the campaign for Saturday's general election enters its final week, the Labour Party is coming up with last-minute promises which - as the latest opinion survey by this newspaper reveals - are being taken for what they are: electoral gimmicks.

In fact, almost 80 per cent of those surveyed said they will not be influenced in their vote on Saturday by Labour's promise to give everyone a two-month tax holiday which will cost the exchequer - which is supposed to be in dire straits - about Lm25 million.

But that is not all: Dr Alfred Sant, who pointedly refused to appoint a Minister for Gozo when he became Prime Minister in 1996, but appointed a Parliamentary Secretary responsible to him instead, has had a last-minute change of heart on this too, after his party's U-turn on VAT. A Labour government, he said on Friday, will appoint a Gozo Minister - an appointment first made by a Nationalist government in 1987 which had been greeted with scepticism, if not derision, by the then Labour Opposition.

These electoral gimmicks, which voters can see through, can only strain further the credibility of the Labour Party and its leader. That credibility had already been shaken when Dr Sant declared that what Malta had just obtained at Copenhagen was not Lm81 million net over three years, but only Lm1.5 million a year!

Labour's credibility came under further strain when the party propaganda machine, in the referendum campaign, churned out one lie after another, such as the "ban" on overtime. The lies and fear-mongering reached a peak by March 8, but truth prevailed because the Yes votes outnumbered the Noes by no fewer than 19,466 - a convincing enough margin, one would have thought.

Not for Dr Sant, though. To prove that there is no limit to which he can drag down his - and his party's - credibility, he managed to convince his adherents and (apparently) his party executive that the Yes had not prevailed at all. The party's unquestioning media faithfully toed the line.

Indeed, for him it was Labour's inexistent 'partnership' option that had won - simply because those who voted Yes votes were 'only' 48 per cent of those listed on the electoral register and the MLP had directed its supporters either to vote No, or invalidate their vote, or stay away. So, all those who stayed away (some actually preferred to rest in eternal peace), had thereby 'voted' for partnership!

Now Dr Sant has, on more than one occasion, berated this newspaper and its sister daily for allegedly contradicting the stand they had taken in previous referenda - those of 1956 on the Mintoff government's proposal of Malta's integration with Britain, and 1964, on the Independence Constitution drawn up by Borg Olivier's Nationalist government.

In both cases, although the majority of those who voted had said Yes, these newspapers had argued not that the alternative had prevailed (as Dr Sant is doing now) but that there had not been a clear endorsement of the government's proposal. However, in both instances the Yes majority was officially accepted (the integration project broke down much later).

In any case, turnout in both 1956 and 1964 was nowhere as high as it was on March 8 this year. In 1956, just 59 per cent had bothered to vote (PN had called for a boycott; Miss Strickland's PCP had instructed electors to vote No), while in 1964 turnout was 80 per cent. On that occasion the Labour Party, which favoured independence but not on Borg Olivier's terms, had instructed supporters to vote No. The three smaller parties - PCP, Toni Pellegrini's CWP and Herbert Ganado's DNP - were against independence. Since the question did not ask voters whether they wanted independence or not, the smaller parties felt they could not take part in the vote. PCP and CWP called for a boycott; DNP asked voters to invalidate their ballot papers.

But in no case did the same party (as the Labour Party did this year) give contradictory instructions to voters. It stood to reason - and this was realised by the vast majority of Labour supporters - that if the MLP opposed membership, then they had to vote No. Not voting at all or spoiling their ballots should have meant, as it does normally, not taking sides because in this case one was unable to decide between membership and non-membership.

In any case the 91 per cent turnout registered last month gives the referendum outcome the 'legitimacy' which its two predecessors did not have.

But Dr Sant destroys his own argument when gives his own interpretation of the 90 per cent Yes vote for EU membership in Slovenia on March 23. With a straight face, he insists that "54 per cent" had voted for membership there, because turnout was only 60 per cent! And this when there was no call for abstention in that country. By his same argument, then only six per cent had voted No!

And then we wonder where Dr Sant's and Labour's credibility have gone.