Bad news don’t stop for the Labour Party. Despite constant and uninterrupted setbacks for the Labour Party in electoral terms and on its influence on the electorate, Prime Minister Robert Abela seems determined to continue on this slow road to election defeat. The Budget was supposed to serve as a comeback for Labour, a new political strike that would have upended its electoral hopes by loosening the tax burden of middle-class and reminding the electorate of its support to the working-classes. The Budget, however changed nothing in the current political situation.
Robert Abela is deluding himself by believing and advising his party and government colleagues that Labour’s challenges are due to policy and execution issues. However, voters who remember 2019: basically, everyone except first-time and youngest voters, are no longer basing their choices on policy or ideology. While loyalists will vote as they always have, those who actually determine the outcome of the elections are increasingly voting for something better: they seek a new and different essence altogether, hence the rise of third-party support.
If one excludes single-issue voters on abortion who will be voting in the next elections, those with a liberal and even a left-wing bent will be voting to attempt a radical change in society either by seeing the Labour Party in Opposition to force it to disown Joseph Muscat publicly and officially or by attempting to vote a third-party in power. Robert Abela is refusing to admit that the Labour Party’s essence has been corrupted by its tacit appeasement and cover-up of Joseph Muscat. By covering up Joseph Muscat’s corruption, Robert Abela may have thought, that this was merely a case about an individual, but in reality it is about the fundamental principles of governance and party ethics.
At this point, Robert Abela has no best-case scenario. Even if he scrapes a victory in the next general election and becomes the first Prime Minister to achieve four consecutive terms in power, it would come at a significant cost to the Labour Party, likely winning with a narrow majority and bringing back memories of Lawrence Gonzi’s final, and unstable government.
Website Editor
Historian and Publisher
Leave a Reply