Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/789855
maltatoday, WEDNESDAY, 22 FEBRUARY 2017 4 THE relatively good turnout for the PN's protest march on Sunday suggests that an opposition which was written off as a potential con- tender for government in 2018, may well be showing signs of resurgence. Polls had registered a drop in trust in Muscat and a narrowing gap be- tween the parties after Panamagate, but not enough to put Labour's vic- tory in 2018 in doubt. Surely partcipation in demon- strations is mostly indicative of the party's ability to mobilise its core vote and does not shed any light on its ability to win over floating vot- ers, but in the battle of images last Sunday's protest did send a message that Simon Busuttil can give Mus- cat a run for his money. Moreover getting people in the street has al- ways been a harder task for the PN than for the PL, simply because of the sociological make up of its elec- toral block. But if the PN does stand a chance of winning next year, it will be subverting one of the unwritten laws of Maltese politics: that gov- ernments are only dethroned after two terms in power. Post independence Maltese poli- tics have operated through 10-year cycles of alternation which gave op- positions time to rejuvenate and re- invent themselves and governments to prove themselves in power: 1962 to 1971, 1971 to 1981 (prolonged by five years thanks to the perverse electoral result of 1981) and 1987 to 1996. Benefitting from incumbency, parties have also achieved their best results after their first term in gov- ernment. This was the case with the PN in 1966, the PL in 1976 and the PN in 1992. It was the extraordinary circum- stances created by Dom Mintoff's revolt which led to the premature demise of Alfred Sant's government and broke with this cycle of alterna- tion. This was followed by the existen- tial EU membership debate, which further prolonged Labour's time out in the political wilderness. La- bour's threat to EU membership and Sant's decision to stay on as La- bour leader despite the 2003 defeat, created an overwhelming impera- tive for a segment of voters to give the PN two more mandates beyond the administration's expiry date. Labour's historic rebound The scale of Labour's victory in 2013 may well be seen as being proportional to the extra years in power borrowed by the PN in pow- er. Moreover Muscat in opposition did everything within his power to make sure that his would not be a normal but a super majority. This explains why he promised so much to so many and why he aimed at occupying the centre right end of the spectrum on economic policy while still appealing to social liber- als alienated by the PN's embedded moral conservatism. In government Labour has managed to appease most of the lobbies which backed it, while disappointing on themes like governance and environmental protection, two issues where the PN was also lacking. In normal circumstances discern- ing voters would give Labour the benefit of the doubt, giving the PN five more years to renew itself on the opposition benches. For despite its efforts to produce sane albeit im- perfect policies on the environment, the public domain and good gov- ernance, the PN has a mountain to climb to prove that it has the people with the conviction to enact such policies. Logic dictates that after being trashed in opposition by the largest margin in post independ- ence history, a party needs a decade in opposition to re-emerge from the cleansing flames of purgatory and present itself as an alternative government. This is because voters vote for people not for abstractions. And the PN still lacks a front bench, which is seen as being both credible and effective. Moreover winning News Analysis: PN rebound or Labour Discerning voters face a hard choice in the next election: that of avoiding a dangerous Labour landslide leading to unfettered governance without giving the PN the blank cheque of a premature re-entry to Castille. JAMES DEBONO asks will voters confirm or defy past electoral cycles in next year's election?