Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1122313
2 maltatoday | MONDAY • 27 MAY 2019 EUROPE 2019 MATTHEW VELLA IN his tenth electoral outing, Joseph Muscat will take home more honours: an unprece- dented 50,000 majority, clinch- ing a fourth seat in Brussels, and soundly beating a third Nationalist Party leader with a 55.9% majority. In disarray, the PN now pre- sides over a historic defeat that has left it maimed: with 36.2% of the vote it remains "the sec- ond largest party" – to use the words of its lame duck leader Adrian Delia. But internally, the PN suffered lower turnouts in its typical strongholds in the north, and in middle-class towns like Sliema, St Julian's and Swieqi. Delia, who says he will not resign, will now get a double dose of disappointment in next week's local council elections, where fewer voters cast their ballots. If the writing is on the wall, Delia prefers to ignore it, insist- ing the party is on "a voyage" to reach out to disaffected voters and to understand why the PN is not seen as an option. "We are still the second largest party in the country and we have an obligation to represent these people the best way possible. We are obliged to understand why we haven't yet won the re- spect of these other voters. We have to understand their aspi- rations and why they have not chosen us to be their voice." Delia was down at the Naxxar counting hall yesterday soon after giving a live press confer- ence from party headquarters, telling the press that he would not resign. He then went in- side the counting hall where he hugged every party volunteer waiting for him by the perspex wall. Even Delia's men appeared not as disheartened by the dis- astrous result. PN secretary- general Clyde Puli was insisting that the PN's drubbing was less bad than forecasts of 88,000 vote majorities for Labour. "This hasn't happened and the result is very similar to that of the last general election," Puli told NET TV. "The PN didn't just come out of a massive electoral defeat in the last general election but the aftermath of that as well: anxie- ties, concerns and narratives of how the party was split in two. The party will take lessons from this result because the people have spoken but after the PN's modest electoral campaign, the result showed that the PN has been consolidated," Puli said. "This augurs well for the fu- ture, that if we carry on with our method of campaigning, we will start seeing results." This is what Delia and his men will be telling PN supporters, in the face of an ongoing party rift that shows no signs of abating. Unless his parliamentary group moves to replace Delia, the PN leader can be expected to stay on until a next general election. Even the MEPs elected yes- terday shows Delia failed to get his cheerleaders elected: incumbent Robert Metsola was always the frontrunner, clinch- ing almost 40% of the PN vote with over 44,000 votes, but Net TV anchor Frank Psaila, whose campaigning started earlier than most, failed to take Da- vid Casa's seat. Delia has lost soundly, and yet he stays on. Joseph Muscat on the other hand took a fourth seat – new candidates Josianne Cutajar and Alex Agius Saliba bring in a youthful generation to the Brussels line-up, while incum- bents Miriam Dalli and Alfred Sant kept their seats effort- lessly. It was Dalli who shined, with over 65,000 votes, the kind of popularity which former MEPs- turned-leaders, like Muscat himself and Simon Busuttil, had in their time. The other news of the day came from a darker corner: Malta's far-right, embodied by Imperium Europa's fire- brand leader Norman Lowell, was polling high numbers. As the Democratic Party (over 5,000 votes) and Alternattiva Demokratika (approx. 2,000 votes) registered their lowest ever numbers, testaments to their lacklustre campaigns and silly internal tiffs, Lowell polled close to 10,000 votes. The outcome surprised those who see the far-right as a threat to decency in Maltese society, especially after the cold-blood- ed murder of Ivorian national Lassane Souleymane in Hal Far. Two young soldiers stand ac- cused of the murder. But Lowell's result has to be taken in the context of the low- er turnouts, the lacklustre cam- paigns of the PN, AD, and PD, and the concerns on migrant workers, both skilled and un- skilled, legal and not, and their effects on salaries and property prices. In 2004, Arnold Cassola – who resigned from the Green Party at the start of the election – won over 25,000 votes after the EU referendum the year earlier, which AD supported whole- heartedly. Yet that support was not translated into votes in the 2008 general election, where people vote for a government. In European elections, people might be inspired to vote for an idea, or a sentiment of protest and outrage. In general elec- tions, they vote for strong par- ties whose people are ready to take a country in their hands. Miriam Dalli 65,000-70,000 Roberta Metsola 30,000 Alfred Sant 30,000 David Casa 24,000 Alex Agius Saliba 20,000 Josianne Cutajar 16,000 Approximate vote counts (unofficial) Muscat triumphs... and far-right raises its head