Opinion: The genius of Jason

Aqra bil-Malti.

“Every poll in the last two months was off the mark. Then there was the poll of the people’s pulse. Personally, I knew the gap between the two parties would narrow.”  That was Labour’s longtime guru Jason Micallef’s comment after Labour’s dismal performance at the MEP elections.

Everybody got it wrong except him. Forget polling, stop the surveys, and dump Vince Marmara. Next time you want to know how the country will vote, just ask Jason.

He always knows everything; Jason is a genius. He could have saved a lot of people a lot of time, effort and money because he knew all along what would happen because he is Jason Micallef, the man with the finger on the nation’s pulse.

“The Labour party won the European Parliament elections again. And the PN lost again,” Jason Micallef declared in his Facebook post.  But for some strange reason, he wasn’t celebrating.

He was pointing fingers at everybody except himself for Labour’s terrible losses at the MEP elections. No matter how brightly Labour paints the result, Labour lost heavily.

Labour lost the majority of Malta’s seats in the European Parliament, including its coveted fourth seat. It also lost its absolute majority. In 2019, Labour won 54.29% of the votes cast.

This time, it only won 45.26% of votes. That’s the worst result for Labour since 1966. Labour lost its commanding 42700 vote advantage of 2019 to a mere 8454 lead this time round.  That’s a 34,246 vote swing from Labour to PN in just 5 years.

That’s a lot of losing for a winning party. And Jason knows exactly why Labour lost so much – he, the great Jason Micallef – was not involved in this campaign.  “I’ve been involved in Labour party electoral campaigns for 25 years.  This was the first Labour election campaign in which I was not involved at all.”

Take that, Labour.  See what you get when you push Jason aside. Without Jason, you can only lose.

“It wasn’t my choice,” he clarified, “it was the choice of somebody else (here’s looking at you Robert Abela).”  There you have it: The main reason Labour was so rudely chastised by the electorate was that Jason Micallef was “systematically sidelined”  (twarrbu sistematikament).

Labour shouldn’t bother with a post-mortem after the election, and they shouldn’t waste their time poring over the results. They’ve got Jason.

If they stopped systematically trying to eliminate and spitefully exclude him, he would tell them all they needed to know.

Because he knows exactly why Labour was so ruthlessly humiliated. And Jason being Jason, he’s not holding back. He spelt it out in his Facebook post before he was even asked.

According to Jason, Labour lost not only because the party systematically removed those who served Labour in the past but also because its cabinet ministers behaved like “teenagers” on social media, Micallef claimed.

Labour lost because, as Jason put it, there was “a massive lack of coordination between the authorities and government agencies in relation to infrastructural projects”. Road closures, digging of trenches, and traffic congestion infuriated the people. Well, he’s got a point there.

But that’s not all. The other big reason behind Labour’s catastrophic performance was the party’s “confused strategy on the (Vitals) inquiry.”

According to Jason Micallef, Labour’s debacle was caused by its failure to clearly support Joseph Muscat’s “innocence”.  “I am convinced that the majority of Labour supporters felt that the former Leader and prime minister and two former ministers were left alone,” he commented.  “This disappointed the party’s hardcore supporters.”

And there were more pearls of wisdom from Jason. Labour’s campaign decided to hold “a concert and enormous celebrations which gave the impression that Labour was celebrating before the people had even voted.” He’s got a point there too.

This is the party that accuses others of arrogance. They haven’t learnt Chris Fearne’s lesson. He, too, organised a victory party and invited his rival Robert Abela to join before the leadership election even started.  And we all know how that went.

Labour was doing the same, organising celebratory concerts before the ballots were even cast. Those huge celebrations have fallen flat.

Labour now finds itself with a mere 3.2% advantage over PN. That’s less than the number of invalid votes cast – 9884 in total.

That’s how razor-thin Labour’s advantage is over the PN. And things can only get worse for Labour. Its deputy leader, Daniel Micallef, resigned within 48 hours of the devastating results but claimed to have decided to resign two years ago.

It wasn’t Labour’s worst performance since 1966 that triggered his exit. It wasn’t the fact that Robert Abela had cost the party tens of thousands of votes or that he proved to be the most electorally unpopular Labour leader ever.  Not even Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici managed such dismal results in 1987 or 1992.

But don’t worry – Jason Micallef has the answers. He knows how to fix things for Labour. “Time is in favour of the Labour Party,” he announced, “there is enough time and chance to fix things for the better.”

So what is Jason’s ingenious solution for Labour? How does Jason propose to bring back the tens of thousands who abandoned Labour?

Well, here it is: “My genuine appeal remains the same as always – (take care of) the interest of the Labour Party and its people (in-nies tieghu), always and everywhere.”

Jason Micallef’s quick fix for Labour is to alienate even more of the population, antagonise even more of the public, and turn more voters against the party by explicitly making it clear that Labour is in power to serve only its own interests and those of “its people.”

Thank you, Jason. What would we do without you?