Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1197486
THIS is the first Sunday of the New Year: traditionally, a time for newspaper columnists to make wildly generic predic- tions about what the next 365 days may have in store. But it is also the last Sunday before the Labour leader- ship election that will usher in a new prime minister (and therefore, in theory, also a new direction) for Malta; and by the look of things on my news- feed this morning, it may even prove the last Sunday before the entire planet is ripped apart by a world war that we seem to be in the process of just begin- ning (if it hasn't already been burnt to ashes by environmen- tal catastrophe, of course). Under such circumstances, you will forgive me for not engaging in the usual bout of newspaper clairvoyance this time round. There have been more than 20 New Year edi- tions since I started writing a regular column in newspa- pers… but I don't remember a single one when the immedi- ate future was as murky and unfathomable as the one facing us right now. Heck, I can't even predict if the national power supply will last until I finish this arti- cle… which is why I'm hitting CTRL+S every fourth or fifth word. Let alone who will win next Sunday's election between Chris Fearne and Robert Abela, and what changes (if any) ei- ther scenario will portend. Then there's the question of how the current situation in Libya will unfold… well, OK, at least on this one there's a simple prediction we can all make: it will result in another refugee/mass immigration emergency, with Malta strate- gically positioned at the precise epicentre of the crisis zone. So the question becomes: how well are we prepared to handle it? Better, or worse than how we're handling the ongo- ing (and equally unforeseeable) power emergency, that arose after the Interconnector cable mysteriously got damaged 150m beneath the Malta-Sicily channel? I don't know: there are just too many variables, in too many equations, everywhere you look. But hey, that's just me: and I don't believe in clairvoyance anyway. Others, however, seem to be undeterred by the sheer fogginess of their crystal ball. Like Chris Fearne, for instance: who felt confident enough to make not one, but two New Year predictions (three, if you include the implied one about him winning next Sunday) in around as many sentences. In one breath, he foresaw that the Nationalist Party would never win another election for as long as he lives… to the extent that the letters 'RIPN' would be engraved on his own tombstone; and in the next, he declared that "if the Labour Party has faith in me to lead the country, my priority will be to unite the nation"… Erm… not to split hairs, or anything: but the chances of both those prophecies coming true are kind of bleak, when you think about it. For unless Chris Fearne intends to 'unite the nation' under a single, glo- rious and unopposed Labour dictatorship – at least, until his own death (like General Fran- cisco Franco before him) – the outcome of his earlier predic- tion more or less cancels out the possibility of the second. To put it another way: I don't often agree with Simon Busut- til… but when I do, I tend to go out of my way to mention it in an article. "How on earth can Chris Fearne heal and unite our mortally wounded country with this sort of arrogant and divisive spiel?", he tweeted in response. And he's right: the two projections are clearly antithetical. But like most paradoxes, this one exists for a reason. Actu- ally, for several: the simplest being that 'appeals for national unity' are a standard, text- book soundbite required from anyone with any aspirations to becoming Prime Minister in this country (it's right there in the manual, on page 46). Eddie Fenech Adami prom- ised the same thing before the 1987 election, with his 24 OPINION maltatoday | SUNDAY • 5 JANUARY 2020 Raphael Vassallo The future is uncertain... but it won't be 'united' The stark fact of the matter is that Chris Fearne hasn't won the Labour leadership election yet; and my gut feeling tells me he is nowhere near as confident as his public appearances suggest