News • 12 JANUARY 2003

Labour Party herald first of 2003 mass meetings

By Matthew Vella

Electoral campaigning is transmuting into the sweltering heat of the mass meeting. Next Sunday 19 January will see the first mass meeting of the 2003 electoral campaign, with the Malta Labour Party greeting its folds in Marsa.

The start of the mass meeting ‘season’ will also be guaranteeing high spirits and frenzied atmospheres as carcading troupes will be touring the streets en route to their Mecca.

Labour were also the first to have their propaganda plastered onto roadside billboards. The Nationalist bilboards, 36 in all, have so far remained empty.

As Opposition party, Labour have already sent its party tactics to high gear, and since last year has amassed a series of targets which are set to form the corpus of their critique in the ensuing months. Tackling structural deficits and public debt, dubious conduct in government entities and pinpointing their most favourite enemies, Labour can be expected to provide the first in a series of shows directed against the Nationalist administration.

MLP media officer Mark Farrugia told MaltaToday that Labour’s message will be New Labour’s proposals for a new Labour government, the advantages of its partnership strategy for Malta, as well as concentrating on the economic state of the country, the structural deficit, cost of living and unemployment.

PN information director Gordon Pisani said that the PN had no mass meetings scheduled in the near future, although nothing was yet decided.

The Nationalist Party will be facing its toughest battle yet. Whilst optimistic that the EU referendum will be returning the YES camp victorious at the hustings, the PN are hoping that the victory wave will land them the elections too.

The pundits are banking on an EU referendum around the 22 February, less than a month before the 8 March local council elections. As party in government, local council elections never tend to show favourable results for the Nationalist Party, who have had little success within the past years – as 2002 showed, whatever mid-term indication the local elections could have provided, the MLP was always victorious.

And ever since May 1st of last year, Labour have been banking on sure victory despite their paranoid tussles with the Where’s Everybody? team and their vitriolic attack on Central Bank Governor Michael Bonello.

So the Labour Party says the media is against it, and that the Nationalist Party has better PR, better marketing and sweeter pills. That is however, no great spoke in Labour’s wheels. The Nationalists should be worrying a bit more about their supporters, particularly those who perceive the long years the party has had in power has made it more arrogant and jaded by power.

Labour is banking on these disgruntled supporters, and on winning back the floaters who have been given grief by the Nationalist administration. So watch that hunting lobby. And the boathouse owners. Alternattiva Demokratika are also out to win the support of those Nationalists who have fallen out with the party and the sympathy of that upcoming and somewhat vocal of lobbies, the pro-divorce voters.

matthew@maltamag.com