24 hours later

The immensity of the Labour victory has probably not yet sunk in.  36,000 votes majority does not come from nowhere. 

I just hope that the present Nationalist Party realises that a simple superficial facelift is not going to save the day.

It is a pity that all the old PN ministers have been re-elected.  It will be very difficult to make internal reforms with the same old faces who were part of the last government still around.

If they really want to rebuild the party, they really need to change the leadership and the people who ran the show, and that includes Lawrence Gonzi and Simon Busuttil. 

Keeping Simon Busuttil at all costs would also be a serious mistake.

He was a walking disaster and did not help the campaign.

And I think that they really need to think out of the box.

They need to ask themselves why they lost in such a big way and start, for a change, blaming themselves and not anyone else.

Everyone has his or her own personal reasons for they voted for any of the three parties, or whether they voted at all. 

Those reasons can be confronted and debated but surely the fact that such a colossal switch happened means that was something seriously wrong.

Yet, it is up to the PN to realise that the massive haemorrhage towards Labour is a wake up call.

In the last five years there were three wake up calls and they were ignored.

The first was the national election in 2008, which was won by a margin of 1,600 votes.

I continue to believe that had it not been for Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando and the way the whole Mistra conundrum was manipulated by the PN, Alfred Sant would have won the election.

The second message, was the European parliamentary election in 2009, while the third was the divorce referendum.

In all the three episodes, the electorate sent a very clear message. And the risposte to this was absolute arrogance.

In all three examples, the MaltaToday surveys (by the way never reported on TVM) were spot on.

The backbench rebels Franco Debono, Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando and Jesmond Mugliett did not help the Gonzi administration, neither did absolute one-sided reporting of State TV hijacked by Where's Everybody or former PN officials and journalists.

The last five years have been the worst form of State Broadcasting ever and continued in the last two days with a shameful and second-rate reportage of the whole election. 

This morning watching TVAM I could not help noting Pierre Portelli's biased commentaries - especially his condescending quips about Alternattiva. 

Going by his bias after such an electoral result, I would not be too surprised that the PN makes the same mistake, political leaders and parties make after losing in such a big way.