If it is not a wakeup call, then what is it?

Every survey is not carved in stone and at times when societal shifts are big and deep gauging the true extent of public opinion is tricky.  

Nonetheless, there has been a trend over the past months and it cannot be ignored.   

MaltaToday’s latest electoral survey has a very simple storyline: Many voters who voted for Labour are saying they will not vote. They are also saying that they will not vote for the PN in their droves. Significantly, the PN leader cannot quite galvanise enough public appreciation. Indeed, he continues to struggle to win over the public’s trust unlike Robert Abela who still ranks high. 

Now, it is clear that Abela will not be happy with a survey that gives the Nationalist Party a 12,000-vote advantage but a closer look at the numbers shows the PN is bogged down. 

The PN’s forward march remains slow and cumbersome, failing to capitalise all it can from the discontent with government. It is like a car trying to run at full speed on second gear. I do not need to spell out what the PN has to do to go into cruising speed at top gear. 

On the part of the Labour Party, one cannot say there has not been an effort to address certain problems. Yet it is still reeling from numerous failures and some of them are next to impossible to address. The principle concern for Labour is voter retention. 

Unless the party renews itself, radically changes its constitution and more importantly detaches itself from its former leader Joseph Muscat, it will continue to struggle. 

Muscat is still part of the Labour DNA and his political failures have taken the party down. It is high time the PL understands that detachment from Muscat is a very crucial step. 

One way of doing this is to call an early election and rally the troops and the alienated former voters. A new Labour Party after the next general election will then be in a position to extricate Muscat. 

Surveys can be ignored, but doing so can be perilous.

Middle East inferno 

The politics of Israel has turned the Middle East into an inferno.  There is a feeling of helplessness and despair. The argument that Israel can do as it wishes and that an Israeli life is worth hundred times more than that of a Palestinian or Arab is unbelievable.   

More peculiar is the habit of Israeli apologists to attack all those who raise a finger to express concern over the sufferings of innocent people to be accused of being anti-semite. 

The truth is that Israel’s military has perfected the art of war and retribution like no other. The country’s leaders argue that they have every right to defend their country and their people with whatever it takes. And to achieve this aim they are willing to kill and maim innocent people. They bomb indiscriminately, they destroy infrastructure and destroy peoples. 

Europe and the US have stood by watching atrocities unfold and no one has said a word.   

The US, conscious of the strong Jewish lobby, restricts its concerns to words but continues to finance the Israeli State with billions of sophisticated military hardware – making Israel one of the most efficient war machines in the world. 

To accuse Israel of being a fascist state would be close to being correct where it not for being a democracy. But it is also an apartheid state with two rules: One for its citizens and another for its neighbours and Palestinians. 

The Israeli government has used every possible game in the playbook to influence Western governments to say nothing or go soft on them.   Apart from declarations of concern, the ability of Israel to bomb and kill indiscriminately continues with the West unable to do anything. 

And no one seems to want to hear that the more the Palestinians and other Arabs suffer, the more significant the reckoning turns out to be and the chances of the whole Middle East going in tilt increase. 

Malta has a small part to play but we need to be firm in Europe and work hard to get our Maltese representatives in Europe to kickstart a peace plan for all, and not only for the Israelis. 

When it comes to the US, we might as well give up. 

Moreover, we need to understand that the Palestinians are not second class citizens who can be mutilated and murdered in their hundreds every single day. 

The murder of an Israeli is unacceptable but so is the murder of hundreds of Palestinians.