the view from the afternoon

We just had a local election in Malta and the Maltese Labour Party lost again. This party is meant to represent the working class, unfortunately it’s a joke, just a bunch of power hungry opportunists who have no ideological beliefs. The party recently elected a new party leader- Joseph Muscat. This is one of the major sites where you can find news about Maltese politics: maltarightnow. this site is run by the party that won the recent election, only by 1,500 votes. they’re called the “partit nazzjonalista” (nationalist party), but ironically it was this party that got us into the EU (that’s malta for you- a nationalist party that promotes supranational participation and a ”socialist” party that is against student stipends). the victorious party made use of facebook to reach out to the university voters, much like Obama is doing over here in the US. (nationalist party facebook group) the Labour party did not take advantage of these resources to the same extent as the nationalists. However, they learnt from there mistake and the new MLP leader used facebook to organise and invite people to the meetings and conferences leading to his nomination.