Bernard Grech nailed it last Sunday in Pietà speaking to a large and enthusiastic crowd: it will be a long hard slog but the Nationalist Party is moving in the right direction and by a good jump in just two years.

“Last Saturday was the first step to where we plan to go, it will be a long and difficult road but the PN is determined to achieve its goal with the support of the people,” read the report of his speech in Times of Malta.

No triumphalism but a realistic, grown-up assessment that bodes well for the PN and gives much needed hope to the rest of the country.

In Malta, whether we like it or not, results in a general election are about the gap between the two main parties represented in parliament. In other countries, too, electoral systems are being changed to give an absolute majority to the highest-polling party. This is what they did in Italy and Greece, for example. The gap matters, everywhere.

The story of the MEP and local elections is that most of the 40,000 Labour-PN vote gap has evaporated. By a lot: the PN reduced the gap by 34,000 in the MEP election and by 27,000 in local elections.

The difference between the MEP and local election results needs to be evaluated but, at a first glance, the electorate treated the MEP election more like a national election while there were many personal votes and obvious local factors at play in the local elections. Labour’s huge power of incumbency during the last five years in 70 per cent (47 of 68) of our local councils must partly explain it.

Nationally, in the MEP election, Labour won by a mere 8,400 votes. Here again, Labour was attempting to buy votes up to the very last minute through clientelism. Robert Abela was sending cheques much like a third-world despot. And PBS, Malta’s Pravda, was churning out pure propaganda and removed any meaningful political discussion from its main channel.

The big cut in the gap, which must really have happened in the last two years since the general election, is a moral victory for the PN and for Grech personally. The PN leader has been quietly uniting his party after years of infighting and his excellent working relationship with former PN leader Adrian Delia is obvious, even visually in the counting hall. Much to the credit of both.

Grech can offer the grown-up, genuine and fair leadership this country is yearning for. He is unassuming, that is true; but do we really need the spoilt puerile prime minister we have? Or a billionaire-club world champion of corruption and organised crime? There is much ministerial material among the PN parliamentary group, as opposed to our childish and incompetent ministers, who only understand fawning cronies and likes on Facebook.

The PN can now look forward to better times, for the party and, more importantly, for Malta. In one fell swoop, it has dealt a blow to the psychological bullying that ‘the PN is finished’ helped by opinion polls that were all dead wrong. Malta’s pollsters need to do much soul-searching of their own.

Bernard Grech can offer the grown-up, genuine and fair leadership this country is yearning for- Eddie Aquilina

The marks of the last 11 years are there for all to see. Enormous corruption in anything Labour touches. Its top people charged in our courts with bribery and the setting up of a criminal organisation to siphon off part of the €400 million euro heist in our hospitals. Huge overpopulation and cheap labour are keeping real wages flat, while we suffer substantially higher prices than they do in Sicily.

Labour has sold off our environment. The takeover of our public spaces, round the clock rush-hour traffic and building anywhere and everywhere are choking Malta. Labour’s latest ‘green’ idea is to ruin village cores with more storeys. These are the results of a government in the pockets of the highest bidders.

We can send the kleptocracy that has taken over our government where it belongs only if the PN gets more votes than Labour. There are those who dream of some deus ex machina third party that can save Malta without the PN but that is a dangerous illusion.

Where is Malta’s third party? In the motley crew of no less than four ‘third parties’ and 13 independent candidates who stood for the MEP elections?

Many mention Arnold Cassola. Genuine as he is, he naively stormed out of Alternattiva Demokratika and this time round got only half as many votes as he did in 2004. The votes he got now were just a third of the non-main-party votes. And he did not even stand for a local council.

A party needs organisation but ADPD, after 35 years of existence, could not even muster 68 candidates to give a choice to voters in the local council elections, where they could get seats, while they fielded no fewer than four candidates in the MEP elections. These are the facts.

Real politics is about candidates, a coherent programme and well-organised political parties. That is why in Germany you cannot stand as an independent candidate.

Genuine politics is about hard work, not ego. A coherent programme tackles all areas and is not just (mostly environmental) moaning on social media.

I am sorry I am raining on the third parties’ parade but these are the hard facts. And the hardest fact of all is that, to get rid of the kleptocrats running this country, the PN needs to get at least one vote more than Labour and Grech becomes prime minister. Anything less keeps the country in the rut it is.

The huge hope coming out of the results of June 8 is that this is doable.

Malta needs saving.