Interesting times

 

As always, these are interesting times for Malta. Tomorrow the country will go to the polls for what may be the last round of local elections before the general election. If tomorrow's result will be in line with the past few local election results then there will be little that the Nationalist Party can do to turn the tables on Labour in the short time remaining. In that case, the almost uninterrupted 'ventennio' of the Nationalists is about to come to an end, although I doubt if this would lead to radical changes within the party itself, as there is no real immediate alternative to the party's current leadership, at least within the party's parliamentary group. If, on the other hand, the Nationalists' slide is arrested or partially reversed then we may be about to witness the end of the Alfred Sant era in the Labour Party. Either way, the coming months will see a very significant change in our seemingly static political system. Tomorrow's result might well give us a preview of how it's going to go. The only pity, from my perspective, is that I won't be able to follow it too closely as I'll be on my travels. I'll be back with my comments on this and other issues in a couple of weeks' time.