Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1521091
7 maltatoday | WEDNESDAY • 22 MAY 2024 ANALYSIS gap? The stakes for Grech and Abela the scale of Labour's victory but the result itself may be deceptive. Labour may well win big over the PN by a gap of 20,000 or more votes without even winning an absolute majority and this thanks to abstention in a demoralised PN camp or losses to third par- ties. In this eventuality Labour may well win big by default in a context where it no longer com- mands an absolute majority in the country. If Labour manages to win an absolute majority and retain a sizeable gap in the range of be- tween 15,000 and 30,000 votes, the damage will be contained. And the closer the party gets to the 30K mark, the more negli- gible the damage will be. But if Labour loses its absolute majori- ty and sees its lead cut below the 15,000-vote mark, the myth of Labour's invincibility will start to crack. How will this impact the country? With three years to go before the next general election, Abela will have a harder time recon- ciling the contradictions in his broad coalition of voters, which is bound to be tested by the criminal prosecution of Joseph Muscat, and by urgent decisions needed to address pressing issues like traffic, inflation and land use. And while a setback may well serve as a wake-up call for Labour to listen to the people on their concerns, it may well make the government more inward looking and preoccupied with appeasing supporters through favours and patronage. Moreover, the Oppo- sition may well gain traction the moment people start consider- ing that a Labour government is not an inevitable outcome. This may well attract much needed re- sources and talent to the PN. But paradoxically such a result may reinforce Grech's tried and tested leadership giving Labour the op- portunity of a re-run of the 2022 election in 2027. The fundamental difference be- tween MEP elections and gener- al elections being that while this time round the people have an opportunity to punish Labour in the full knowledge that it will remain in government the next day. For a change of government to happen voters will have to be convinced that Bernard Grech makes a better prime minister. The future of third-party politics MEP elections also offer people the opportunity to vote third par- ty candidates and independents without giving up their say on who governs the country, which is the greatest impediment for people to vote for third parties in general elections. While the prospect of a third-party candidate or inde- pendent getting elected remains dim, polls are showing that near- ly a tenth of the electorate are considering voting for such a candidate. If this phenomenon is confirmed it will expose the sheer impossibility of containing all political opinions and conflicting aspirations in two big tents which are simmering in contradictions. Yet success in MEP elections is historically ephemeral. For example, AD failed to capitalise on Arnold Cassola's near miss in the 2004 MEP election. And even while the far right Imperium Eu- ropa emerged as Malta's third largest party with 8,238 votes in 2019, it was ADPD which re- claimed its place as Malta's third party in the subsequent general election, garnering 4,747 votes. Still, any success by an unapolo- getically racialist, dangerous and bizarre outfit like IE should send shivers down the spine of the po- litical class, which over the years has used immigration as political football while failing to substan- tially address issues like the in- tegration of migrants in Maltese communities. The risk of this may well be a race to the bottom as the major parties struggle to contain the drift to the hard right. 2009 MEP election 35,431 2013 General elections 35,107 2014 MEP election 33,677 2017 General elections 35,280 2019 MEP election 42,656 2022 General elections 39,474 The age of Labour's supermajorities The Opposition may well gain traction the moment people start considering that a Labour government is not an inevitable outcome. This may well attract much needed resources and talent to the PN.