Roberta Metsola will not play ball

Times of Malta seems convinced that Roberta Metsola would be the next PN leader if she accepts to bid for the leadership of the party once the PN suffers another humiliating defeat in 2024 at the European Parliament and local council elections.

Months ago, I had predicted that the PN’s ‘establishment’ will not allow the ousting of Bernard Grech before the 2024 elections in order to try and persuade Metsola to accept their support to ensure that she gets appointed PN and opposition leader, soon after the expected PN debacle in the 2024 elections.

Roberta Metsola. Photo: AFP

A recent report about an attempt to gather enough signatures of PN councillors to oust Grech as soon as possible had been stopped by the ‘establishment’. This confirms my prediction.

I personally cannot visualise Metsola accepting to run for the leadership of an ultra-conservative party. She must know that the PN’s core values are not in sync with her own, much more liberal ones, as her position on divorce since elected speaker/president of the European Parliament has shown.

I believe that is why she had chosen to base her political career in Brussels rather than Malta while using the PN’s membership of the EPP as a stepping stone to her European Parliament ambitions.

Metsola must also be aware that just a change of leadership is impossible to change the PN into an electable party. Just days ago, the PN was defined by its former communication official as a party “locked in a time warp”.

Finally, I believe that Metsola does not want her political career to end, as her Italian friends say “dalle stelle, alle stalle” – the English equivalent of which being “from the sublime to the ridiculous”.

Eddy Privitera – Naxxar

Voting trends

Alan Cooke is right about voting percentages being lower in the UK than in Malta. To answer his question, the main reason is probably lethargy. Another reason could be similar in some ways to those that afflict Malta and every other country – voters are beginning to realise that most politicians crave power and few really care about the welfare of their voters or the country as long as they’re OK.

This is so especially when corruption among those in authority (as in Malta) is at its peak. And look at your unelected masters in the EU, to which EU countries (who think they’re independent) are subservient to – there’s no point voting.

The issue I was dealing with, in replying to his letter, was not statistics and comparisons to the UK but the drop in the percentage of voters. If it dropped to 85 per cent (even if that’s a high percentage) then it must have been higher on previous elections. I was not attempting to compare or contrast. The reason voting is high in Malta is because elections are like festas, a special occasion, and the electorate is politically illiterate.

People tend to vote for a particular party simply because their ancestors before them did so, or they were granted favours. They watch TV channels and news channels sponsored by the party they vote for, so they are fed all sorts of propaganda.

In contrast, look what happened to the Labour Party in the UK in the last election. Their life-long, staunchest supporters turned against them because they were being taken for granted.

Perhaps in Malta there is now emerging a new young generation who enjoy political intellect and vote with their head – or, perhaps, realise that voting does not make a difference.

Paul Brincau – Uxbridge, UK