The Malta Independent
The outcome of the EP elections was discernable to experienced observers. I dared pre-indicate it in my contribution of last Sunday to the Malta Independent on Sunday. My only slight miss was in expecting the AD candidate to be eliminated before the third PN candidate,` with AD votes being transferred to create the` possibility that if all AD votes migrated back to the PN they could still win the third seat in spite of the miserable 1st count performance.
As it happened the size of the defection from PN to AD was larger than my prognosis so the third PN candidate was eliminated and the AD candidate stayed in the running with the third MLP candidate, with the latter being elected without a full quota.
Elections deliver a result well beyond the numbers. And I think it would do well for the main contestants to heed the real underlying message. This was not a winner takes all contest.` It was a bit more than a friendly match in preparation for the real winner takes all contest in 2008. If a week is a long time in politics, four years is an eternity and there is therefore ample time for contestants to heed the message.
The first message for the PN government from the EP election is that it is in power,` courtesy of the MLP who misguidedly, and much against my wishes, bundled the EU issue with the election issue thus playing straight into the PN`s hands in making EU` membership and a Labour government mutually exclusive. `Given a chance to show their displeasure with this government the electorate did it resoundingly.` One should put this in context that in the local elections of 2002, one year before the last general election, there again Labour had trounced the PN by 9% and indeed had obtained an overall majority.`
So twelve months before the April 2003 election and 15 months after it we had a largely similar result. The election result of April 2003 is a deviation from this unmistakeable trend caused by a very specific and unrepeatable factor of the MLP`s disastrous bundling of the EU issue with the general election.` The message for the PN government is clear.` The electorate is tired of them, it considers that they are under-performing and that they offer no tangible solution to the strategic problems which their benign neglect policy has landed us into.
To the MLP the message from the EP election is less clear but it is there lying just beneath the surface. The electorate is saying that no matter how dissatisfied it is with the PN it is not yet quite comfortable to mandate MLP with an overall majority. And to win government an overall majority is needed. Indeed it is not quite heartening for a Labourite like me who expects his party to win government handsomely when facing a fatigued government four years down the road, that even in the face of such a whopping defection where the PN saw their vote dwindle from nearly 52% to less than 40%, the MLP vote stayed static at just over 48% and failed to win an overall majority as they had done in the 2002 local elections.
MLP can only disregard this message at their peril. Celebrations are appropriate to mark the three MEP seats objective.` However, celebrations cannot blind the MLP to the need to analyse the EP result in depth and see what is keeping those who are giving up on the PN government from trusting the MLP as an alternative government.
For AD the message is perhaps hidden even deeper and well below the surface. That they had a performance at the top end of anybody`s expectations is quite undeniable. But ultimately AD, like any political party, exists to register success beyond moral victories; success that could be translated into some form of executive authority.` In spite of all the progress AD is still finding tangible success elusive and has not even managed to score progress at local election level where one would think that AD should present itself better to build a platform for the general election.
Nothing in this result should make AD hope than come next general election they can extend the progress to give them a realistic chance of gaining parliamentary representation. My view is that AD is still perceived as the protest party ` a party to vote for to show displeasure at your traditional party without risking harming the party`s prospect of winning the general election.
AD`s challenge,` if it means to mature into a real political force, is to graduate from being perceived as a protest party to a party that can offer real solutions for the country`s problems. No amount of protesting will, on its own, ever get us one millimetre nearer to finding true solutions.
Seen in a wider context the MEP elections carry a message for the institutional development challenges confronting the EU, especially the promulgation of the new Constitution.` The disconnection between the EU institutions and the people remains. If anything the new EU members from eastern Europe seem to have been quickly infected by the lethargic bug of EU citizens versus the Organisation.
This could only mean that whilst these countries have voted overwhelmingly to join the EU in membership, this was mainly done on a point of principle to proof their European credentials. Now that the point has been made, the new EU citizens of Eastern Europe wanted to register their discontent towards the EU for being so tight-fisted vs. the new members in smoothing their integration at an economic level.
If the EU means to have a working Constitution endorsed by a broad based cross-section of its citizens then the message of the citizens disconnection cannot be ignored as the bureaucrats continue negotiations behind closed doors. Otherwise the EP will continue to be stuffed with an ever-larger dose of euro-sceptics eager to bring the organisation to a grinding halt.
The outcome of the EP elections was discernable to experienced observers. I dared pre-indicate it in my contribution of last Sunday to the Malta Independent on Sunday. My only slight miss was in expecting the AD candidate to be eliminated before the third PN candidate,` with AD votes being transferred to create the` possibility that if all AD votes migrated back to the PN they could still win the third seat in spite of the miserable 1st count performance. As it happened the size of the defection from PN to AD was larger than my prognosis so the third PN candidate was eliminated and the AD candidate stayed in the running with the third MLP candidate, with the latter being elected without a full quota.
Elections deliver a result well beyond the numbers. And I think it would do well for the main contestants to heed the real underlying message. This was not a winner takes all contest.` It was a bit more than a friendly match in preparation for the real winner takes all contest in 2008. If a week is a long time in politics, four years is an eternity and there is therefore ample time for contestants to heed the message.
The first message for the PN government from the EP election is that it is in power,` courtesy of the MLP who misguidedly, and much against my wishes, bundled the EU issue with the election issue thus playing straight into the PN`s hands in making EU` membership and a Labour government mutually exclusive. `Given a chance to show their displeasure with this government the electorate did it resoundingly.` One should put this in context that in the local elections of 2002, one year before the last general election, there again Labour had trounced the PN by 9% and indeed had obtained an overall majority.`
So twelve months before the April 2003 election and 15 months after it we had a largely similar result. The election result of April 2003 is a deviation from this unmistakeable trend caused by a very specific and unrepeatable factor of the MLP`s disastrous bundling of the EU issue with the general election.` The message for the PN government is clear.` The electorate is tired of them, it considers that they are under-performing and that they offer no tangible solution to the strategic problems which their benign neglect policy has landed us into.
To the MLP the message from the EP election is less clear but it is there lying just beneath the surface. The electorate is saying that no matter how dissatisfied it is with the PN it is not yet quite comfortable to mandate MLP with an overall majority. And to win government an overall majority is needed. Indeed it is not quite heartening for a Labourite like me who expects his party to win government handsomely when facing a fatigued government four years down the road, that even in the face of such a whopping defection where the PN saw their vote dwindle from nearly 52% to less than 40%, the MLP vote stayed static at just over 48% and failed to win an overall majority as they had done in the 2002 local elections.
MLP can only disregard this message at their peril. Celebrations are appropriate to mark the three MEP seats objective.` However, celebrations cannot blind the MLP to the need to analyse the EP result in depth and see what is keeping those who are giving up on the PN government from trusting the MLP as an alternative government.
For AD the message is perhaps hidden even deeper and well below the surface. That they had a performance at the top end of anybody`s expectations is quite undeniable. But ultimately AD, like any political party, exists to register success beyond moral victories; success that could be translated into some form of executive authority.` In spite of all the progress AD is still finding tangible success elusive and has not even managed to score progress at local election level where one would think that AD should present itself better to build a platform for the general election.
Nothing in this result should make AD hope than come next general election they can extend the progress to give them a realistic chance of gaining parliamentary representation. My view is that AD is still perceived as the protest party ` a party to vote for to show displeasure at your traditional party without risking harming the party`s prospect of winning the general election.
AD`s challenge,` if it means to mature into a real political force, is to graduate from being perceived as a protest party to a party that can offer real solutions for the country`s problems. No amount of protesting will, on its own, ever get us one millimetre nearer to finding true solutions.
Seen in a wider context the MEP elections carry a message for the institutional development challenges confronting the EU, especially the promulgation of the new Constitution.` The disconnection between the EU institutions and the people remains. If anything the new EU members from eastern Europe seem to have been quickly infected by the lethargic bug of EU citizens versus the Organisation.
This could only mean that whilst these countries have voted overwhelmingly to join the EU in membership, this was mainly done on a point of principle to proof their European credentials. Now that the point has been made, the new EU citizens of Eastern Europe wanted to register their discontent towards the EU for being so tight-fisted vs. the new members in smoothing their integration at an economic level.
If the EU means to have a working Constitution endorsed by a broad based cross-section of its citizens then the message of the citizens disconnection cannot be ignored as the bureaucrats continue negotiations behind closed doors. Otherwise the EP will continue to be stuffed with an ever-larger dose of euro-sceptics eager to bring the organisation to a grinding halt.
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