It’s good that’s what it is. The budget that has just been announced cannot be seen as being a bad budget. In the simplistic balance of good and bad the good wins out by a couple of pounds. There’s income tax measures, there’s support for children, education and development. There’s a nod to such things as culture and the environment. Above all there is a notion of a work in progress that is going in some direction. Today’s article by Berta Sullivan (a not so ghostly PN writer) in the Times is an indication of how the budget fits in the electoral spin – there is a plan, the plan is a PN plan, if you do not want to venture into the unknown keep it steady as she goes and vote PN again.
Then there’s the Friday Wisdom guy who in his hebdomedary dispensations of packets of wisdom has told us that the budget is an electoral tool and that it is difficult to see it as anything more or less than that. Of course it it. But even in his analysis he fails to sufficiently prove to us that there is no plan. At most his wisdom leads to some criticism as to the plan to be adopted but it does acknowledge that there is a plan to be criticised – and not a lump of promises and hidden studies which are (a) unidentifiable and (b) consequently uncriticiseable.
Which is where PN win points in my book. The budget is a LATE (Sant is half right for once) announcement of what they intend to do with the country. Come election time, PN shifts from being the deaf coxswain of the boat who will steer and decide without much heed to any other form of input to being the government with a plan who is all ears to listen. I have my doubts about the listening part. It should probably last till two days after Jour-J. The it will be back to the arrogant style of “We know best what the country wants. We know best what the values of this country are and above all… no divorce, no rent reform, no electoral reform in favour of proper representation and yes, we might be thinking of golf courses and more 5 star hotels. Did we forget to mention how travelling to and from Malta will still be a nightmare?”
Once again PN knows that the biggest asset lies in proving that the opposition once again turns up for the electoral roll-call as one big, disorganised unknown. Throw in a few Birzebbugia like rants and Jobs-for-the boys promises and then even such hopeless performances as Agostino Pio and Joe Saliba are wont to deliver will not do much to damage the ship from sailing home to another victory.
The irony is that the “why and because” of the sudden shift in PN favour after months of trailing in polls is that the undecided and the decided for the third party will once again be given the Hobson’s choice. There’s no way you can risk voting for MLP in these conditions. There’s no way that your third party vote goes to MLPs favour either. You like this new plan. You’d like to believe that they can stick to it without becoming the bumbling, arrogant lot of Mr Creosotes that they all are. So you give them the number 1. That horrid number 1 that ruins the plot thanks to our utilitarian electoral system.
The stage has been set. The danger of having a real party with a real plan eroding votes was sidetracked with the latest electoral reform. Now all that remains is to sit tight and trumpet the plan while letting Sant & Co rave about Vat on education (?), making ends meet (??) and how they love Gozo (???). The rest is as ridiculously easy as setting up a stage on the Fosos….
… and of course… putting a gag on Austin Powers and Joe Saliba would not do much harm either….
[Jacques René Zammit – Christian Democrat/Liberal]
The Malta Chronicle 
Fausto Majistral
October 23, 2007
The danger of having a real party with a real plan eroding votes was sidetracked with the latest electoral reform.
I’m still waiting for an explanation of the mechanics of your claim. Will I have to wait for much longer?
Jacques René Zammit
October 24, 2007
Let’s not keep you waiting much longer. It’s much less difficult than you’d want it to be.
Under current system 5,000 votes nationwide for one party do not necessarily translate into a parliamentary seat – while 5,000 on a district basis will. Whichever way you look at it, whichever way you twist and turn the statistics of voting trends in different (and differently weighted according to you) elections that fact will remain there glaring in your face…
What counts for the goose does not count for the gander. Now if you think that 5,000 is too little a threshold (like I do) then raise it… 10,000 (good), 20,000 (stretching it)…. whatever… what we have here is a step in the other direction – no threshold no possibility for third parties.
Not too complicated in the end. a) There should be a threshold on the national vote. b) There isn’t. c) The only plausible reason that the MLPN would not want one is because they are worried it would work.
(C) would not apply if MLPN had never contemplated using the proportions obtained in the national vote for any reason. Once they did (as in the recent amendments) then it became glaringly obvious that they were treading a minefield and very carefully trying to avoid the very real menace of opening a door to parliament for relatively successful third parties (in a bipartisan world).
Q.E.D. and case shut.
Fausto Majistral
October 25, 2007
Stop shifting goalposts. Whatever you said was the case before the reform. The point on which the matter floundered in 1995 — inter-party transferibility of votes — is still the problem, forget the “treading a minefield” (my God, where do you get your metaphors?). Government went as far as to present a bill then with a national threshold.
Jacques René Zammit
October 25, 2007
No goalposts shifted. After reform situation remains the same for a third party. National votes only count if two parties are elected to parliament… where’s the difference. It just strengthens the argument that the reform was made with preserving the status quo in mind.
Inter-party transferability ? FIrst lets get proportional representation and solve the lost votes problem (which you find so hard to acknowledge) and the hijacked votes problem (which you probably claim does not exist) then we can start to worry about which votes PN can inherit from a better placed Alternattiva or Liberal party.
As for the metaphor… I left the “through” out…. problem with typing too fast (already mentioned it to a sceptical David)… “treading through a minefield” …. it’s a metaphor like any other… just google it to see how frequently it is used.