General election is round the corner, what is your opinion on why the Labour Party can retain should a big lead considering the a number of high profile scandals?
Very interested to hear your thoughts.
[Source](https://www.maltatoday.com.mt/news/data_and_surveys/114401/maltatoday_survey_abela_trust_hit_labour_retains_46000_lead#.YfGNwiTTUWM)
28 comments
Because the cabocci people are only interested in the extra 50-100€ grant to their paycheck (which is then recouped elsewhere) then politics.
Seeing politicians as gods who give you handouts rather than individuals employed _by them_.
Poplu miskin u ta min jithassru.
I just can’t imagine PN doing much better than the previous elections. They need a complete overhaul of their internal structures.
Oh well, I’m probably voting for Cassola so at least my vote is going to someone decent.
I am a foreigner, and not as informed. But I have a Maltese partner and lots of native friends. My impression is that most of the voting base simply doesn’t think about it.
Whatever PL TV tells them all day on the idiot box. Critical thinking is not something everybody can do, and obviously you cannot communicate on an intellectual level with many people on the island.
Then, these idiots go on to vote. Throw in the fanaticism, party obsession and “my family did so I will” mentality and there you go.
It’s a shame, and I think they are a rotten party. But I don’t think PN have anything going for them. It could potentially be heading back to the dark ages~~.~~
I have to give this joke over to the Australian YouTube channel “Honest government adverts.”
Take your choice, “Shit” or “Shit-lite”
Lack of critical thinking
Because PN are not offering better altertnatives to the PL programme; apart from the other internal party problems which refelect on the Party as unsuitable to govern the Country. Do you really think that because the PN will be in government scandals will disappear ? I don’t think so !!
I am not even going to vote cause I don’t agree with both parties
Maltese are stupid… they are happy with a 100eur cheque even though everything else is getting more expensive like food, commodities and property.
#gahan
Back in PN’s day, unless you came from ‘within’ you would be ignored. PN was too arrogant and had no soul. Under Dr Busuttil there was no direction or leadership. PN had no agenda, it was lost and bewildered. The only asset PN had back then was Mrs Caruana Galizia who singlehandedly uncovered scandal after scandal. But otherwise PN did not come up with anything of their own. With Dr Delia in charge, he tried a different approach, but fell foul of the ‘Establishment’ because he tried to cast them aside and they were stronger. Dr Grech is a good family man with a big heart. I know him from my university days. But unfortunately I believe he is being manipulated. PN MPs need to be united behind one agenda. At the moment they are fighting personal crusades alone. Meanwhile with the ‘Establishment’ pulling the strings, PN cannot expect to reel back in ‘lost sheep’.
Today, the more PN and their followers polarise themselves, the more they heap blame and insults on ‘the sheep’ the more they are pushing away potential ‘converts’ back to their folds.
PN must welcome new blood, put aside the Fenech-Adami and DeMarco dynasties and look into the future. PN has to stop acting bitter. One must keep in mind that a significant amount of those 46000 were former PN voters, so they should be working at reconciling and getting some back.
Silvio Schembri is an arrogant pos.
I am a chronic Labour voter and i hate myself for it , but cannot bring myself to vote otherwise , or not vote at all.
I was happy labour lost the eu referendum.
I think at this point it’s mostly the demographics favouring labor.That and the young highly educated pn leaning voters left the island and couldn’t give a shit who runs it.
Can’t say i blame ’em.
Having said that i am vehemently against maltese living abroad who have the right to vote in the general elections without having lived in Malta for most of the term of the present govt.I would not like to see the next govt chosen by those who do not actually live here.
The most likely way for PN to be back in Govt is for the economy to sink.
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Because the gahan receives low bills and gets awarded tax cheques when the party wants the gahan to forget something they have done.
PN needs a charismatic leader and one that doesn’t just play the dirty tit for tat game. It is so childish and boring.
I don’t even have any idea what the PN’s manifest is so why whould I vote for them? I don’t feel represented by either party. I protest vote greens.
Because when you try to get elected on the sole policy of “we are not them”, you are never going to get anywhere. Unless your leader is an amazingly charismatic guy that can convince you policies don’t matter. And my god, this Grech guy is one of the most out of touch pathetic face of a party I have seen in a while.
The normal reaction in situatuons like these is for people to ignore everything and enjoy the status quo. There’s no motivation for change for people who are not “into politics” because there’s no gripping people involved to catch their attention. No interesting, progressive policies ever being proposed by PN – at least none that I heard of, being disconnected from the Maltese media – and that is a problem. You need stuff that can crossover to those people who are disconnected and disenfranchised.
Bottom line, PN offers less and has a very very bad leader too. Also nobody trusts them to be any different should they be in power.
PN is outdated , the working class is a lot bigger than the aristocrats or northern port demographic.
It’s very hard to convince anyone who lived through the 90s to vote PN. It’s a very very complicated affair, but basically it boils down to the heroin epidemic and mass incarceration of regular drug abusers from the 90s-2000s
PN can never win in the current meta, drugs are simply too popular on the island along with the social policy reforms made very recently…
I’m sure none of you have heard the atrocities the police used to commit under PN vs teenage delinquents but most of them remember and they’re very right.
Viva Joseph muscat u labour
When an election swings this is how I mostly feel when inner monologues take root: ‘Evil is Evil. Lesser, greater, middling… Makes no difference. The degree is arbitrary. The definition’s blurred. If I’m to choose between one evil and another… I’d rather not choose at all’ – Andrzej Sapkowski, The Last Wish. But I have never followed through with the ‘I’d rather not choose at all’ even though I wanted to. I always vote at the end of the day. In a country where you have only two big political parties who are corrupt, you don’t have any choice. Both have stolen from our pockets, and I’m not happy with blue or red in government. But I have to choose. What, any of you plan to vote for the other smaller parties? They’ve no power even if they are elected with a pesky one seat. Two large parties call ‘you’re corrupt’ at each other’s throats. Later it is discovered that even the same people who call government MPs corrupt didn’t even pay their taxes; even slept in hotel rooms offered by alleged murderers; or are part of very questionable deals, then you truly lost all manner of faith in them. People like me aren’t just fed up with the current government administration; they are fed up with the other blue hypocrites that think of themselves as saints. They are just as wretched and empty as this government is. When even the head of a protest gang is a shadow minister’s brother, who most probably shares the same dogma at home, do you still try to believe the drivel that comes out of his mouth when he takes to the streets? Or is it another excuse because PN followers want their masters to head the country.
It is obvious that the PN is not a solid party. Once they become ONE people will vote for them.
Day after day I keep losing my faith. After the level of thought and how they spell on Social Media, you can confirm why labour keeps its leadership. I lost my faith even further after trying to hire a shop assistant. The level of mistakes and low effort applications that came in, especially from Maltese is astounding – and that said, there were only a handful of applicants where as applications from TCNs was threefold. Then the same people complain that jobs are being taken by foreigners. I wonder why..
That said, PN is a complete disaster and has done nothing to convince me to vote for them. My next vote will be mixed (as was my previous one). as Labour needs to lose its complete majority.
Mostly because of PN’s failures IMO:
1. PN has done absolutely zero soul searching since 2013 and wants to pretend that corruption, nepotism and rule of law failures are some kind of new phenomenon, when anyone who has lived through the ’90s knows that they absolutely are not. They are now, with a straight face, proposing anti-corruption legislation that they previously actively fought against when they were in government, and somehow trying to pass it off as some sort of unprecedented move. Most people are not going to take PN seriously until it has some sort of honest reflection of how it has also contributed to institutional failure.
2. PN are, for the umpteenth time, basing their electoral strategy on a figure (Daphne Caruana Galizia) who most people fundamentally dislike, whether they like it or not.
3. They’ve had a series of seriously flawed leaders – Gonzi was a terrible leader by all accounts, Busuttil was divisive and nasty, Delia was a buffoon, and Grech is absolutely uninspiring. The party will struggle to recover until they elect a leader with a degree of charisma and vision.
4. They still give off an air of arrogance and entitlement. They seem to get off on calling the electorate stupid and corrupt, seemingly forgetting that the people they’re calling stupid and corrupt are the same people they are meant to be engaging with and getting on their side.
5. PN MPs all seem to hate each other, so why should anyone else like them?
6. In terms of policy, PN are often either a step behind the times (see debates about abortion, IVF, divorce, euthanasia etc.) or else veering wildly from one position to another depending on where the wind of public opinion blows (see their position on mandatory vaccine certificates). They also seem to have no desire to actually tackle the core causes of many of our problems (overdevelopment and environmental degradation, for instance).
I could have listed other points, but I’ll stop there. I think if PN got its house in order, the race would be much closer. Many people are (rightly) disappointed by PL’s performance but would still rather have them in government.
Anyone who genuinely can’t answer this question is not living with actual Maltese surrounding them. Realistically reddit attracts a very small portion of Malta and only a certain demographic.
It’s very simple honestly. The PN are bloody hopeless. They’re completely stuck in the past, and their bullshit conservatism. No one with their brain on right is going to vote for the people who didn’t want embyro freezing when we’re trying to get abortion at some point! They were against divorce, LGBT Rights, IVF laws…the list goes on. Labour increased pensions, stipends and more. Realistically almost everyone in Malta gas benefitted from PL in power. In the 25 years they had “il glekkijiet” did fuck all for us. The EU was the best thing they did and that too long ago.
Their raison d’etre from day 1 of their creation was – we are the nobility and we are OWED our power. No they fucking are not. They used to look down on PL and their supporters for not being ” il glekkijiet”. Normal Maltese people are completely sick and tired of them thinking we should be on our knees begging for their bare minimum. They believe they’re owed power. They still haven’t learnt their lesson. They have 0 backboned proposals, nothing of substance. It’s like being a kid in class getting mad because the student who studies is passing and their not. No one owes you shit in life, and they definitely don’t owe you power. The attitude of the nationalists – PN and all their supporters is absolutely rotten. Having the absolute displeasure of meeting many, they’re absolutely terrible people with no idea what is going on in the lives of normal Maltese people.
When they finally start begging us for our votes, instead of demanding them from their high horse, maybe they’ll get somewhere.
Hope this gives some insight.
The Maltese political environment has always been polarising and individuals are bred into a party as opposed to given the opportunity to form their own opinions on any given concern. This leads to trans-generational inculcation and a fundamentally flawed system. Where a party’s scandals are justified by scandals committed by other parties transgressions decades prior. This inculcation is also evident in the acceptance of unaccountability within the Maltese political environment (A basic demonstration of which would be any political debate. Where it is normalised that no answers are ever provided to any questions, and valid concerns are met with accusations or impertinent elucidations to often completely irrelevant topics). The reality is that just like many other countries the Maltese are inherently and undeniably ignorant as a population and lack the ability to form comprehensive conceptualisations for any given situation. While like other populations we do have brilliant minds and highly ethical and prolific professionals, the vast majority of the population are far from that ideal… Not to mention the sheer lack of critical thinking present in this vast portion of the population. My thoughts are biased and cynical but this is my opinion. I can’t have much hope in a country where many still say that the death of a journalist was “justified” or “deserved”, the grey listing is “nothing important” or a result of another party, and the leaders of a political scandal so heinous it resulted in murder and has reverberated across the world still function within Maltese politics to this day and are referred to as “Kings”… (Not to mention the countless other despair inducing scandals which seem to be overlooked by a mindless and undeniably uneducated population).
People get the government they deserve
Look at other ex common wealth countries and how long(if) they managed to get the economy going… You had great social mobility in the 80s if you were from the working class, you could emigrate, work for money, stop being poor, wear actual shoes.
I’m sorry if you fail to see the assets Malta had vs the wealth that was available in the 90s. We all know who that has to be attributed to… Again, just look at other sovereign ex common wealth countries.
The violence was inexcusable, the labour party has slowly replaced the church for the common class through it’s rent seeking practices. Previously only the elite had access to certain privileges.
The amount of economic made till 2008 was laughable at best, actually kind of sad given how disconnected the country was and how well states such Slovenia did from the ex Yugoslavian republic.
Anyway I’m leaving this shithole, but I still will never vote PN. Maybe once Demarco and fennech adami resign, maybe.
Because we have no opposition sadly. If logic was a factor I would assume that the people would recognize the absurdity of the corruption and scandals that the PL are involved with on a world stage. Of course there are sheep that just vote PL because they treat it as a football team, but I trust that a good percentage just don’t support any party because there is nothing to support.
Always amazed as to why Malta has only two parties and why no one has started a 3rd to be open, honest and for the people rather than corrupt, greedy and ignorant, like both current party’s.