I can Count

The Malta Independent



I did all I could to avoid the confusion we had with the referendum outcome last Sunday. I had warned in very clear terms what the likely outcome would be as early as the 11th February 2003 when writing in the Times under title Back to Square One. I maintained that the referendum will be a dividing force and not a unifying force; that we will have both camps claiming victory using different counting methodologies.

While all surveys tried to indicate an outright overall (i.e. of total eligible votes) YES win using magnitudes varying from 54% to 72%, `using my brain and my ability to question the granularity of survey data and adjusting it for clear untruths in respondents answers, I predicted exactly what was to happen. Writing last Sunday morning in the Independent on Sunday I again warned that the result was likely to put both camps on the roads celebrating and appealed to the forces of law and order to take precautionary measures.

Why am I saying all this` Just to prove to you that I can count. And I stand up to be counted when it matters.

`And I stand up to challenge the Yes camp to prove that the referendum gives them an overall majority of all those who expressed an opinion last Saturday by voting, by purposely invalidating their vote and by purposely abstaining like yours truly. The onus of proof is on them.` And I stand up to challenge the Yes camp to prove that the referendum gives them an overall majority of all those who expressed an opinion last Saturday by voting, by purposely invalidating their vote and by purposely abstaining like yours truly. The onus of proof is on them.

They used and abused of all tricks in the democratic and not so democratic rules to extract a YES vote from the electorate. They falsely branded as a national consultation above party politics, a partisan tool publicly funded in the throes of an election campaign. They bought with our tax money anyone who had a price tag provided one could add another voice to the YES choir.

Against this Goliath sabre rattling David could just answer by using the simplest democratic rule, that of giving voters a multiple choice.` Of course by so doing they captured in the net abstainers who were not meaning to follow Labour policy. But if these cannot be isolated than no one can prove that the Yes votes got an overall majority taking only into consideration the voters and the meaningful invalidators and abstainers.

`I can count and that`s what makes me so optimistic about 12th April.` So the most anyone can truthfully say about last week`s referendum is that it was an inconclusive exercise where the yes camp despite using all its fire power did not manage to get the result they almost took for granted. One has also to admit that my appeals for postponing the referendum were very appropriate to avoid the ensuing division and that we have now come to exactly where Labour said we should be in the first place. We are facing an election from whose rules will emerge a clear single winner with constitutional authority to execute its programme across a wide spectrum of policies not just on a single issue.

Aren`t we experts at wasting energies, money and time to get back exactly where we started off How can we compete in the world if we continue like this`

Now that they burned all their fire-power and afraid to see the dry-powder reserves of the Labour camp for the election campaign, the PN have only one policy left.` The policy to demonise Alfred Sant.` The policy that failed in 1996 and will fail again in 2003. Alfred Sant the dictator we are told. May all dictators take a lesson from Alfred Sant and gracefully give power back to the people as he did in 1998 when he found that internal strife did not allow him to execute the programme he was elected on.

I can count and that`s what makes me so optimistic about 12th April.