A strong attack by former minister John Dalli led to an inevitable reaction at Thursday’s Nationalist Party executive committee meeting. It ended with Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi asking if the committee wanted to remove him and the executive committee giving him a 10-minute standing ovation, sources told this newspaper.

Mr Dalli complained bitterly that this was the fourth election the PN had lost and claimed the party is cut off from the people.

What he said was not much different from what he has been saying ever since he lost the leadership battle against Dr Gonzi and resigned as Foreign Minister.

Speaking at the annual general meeting of the Luqa sectional committee some weeks back, for instance, Mr Dalli claimed “they” wanted to arrest him after the Prime Minister received a letter about him and sent it to the police. He also claimed the party was being ruled by a small clique and boasted he had voted against the recent changes regarding property taxation.

The four-hour meeting of the executive committee, however, was a much calmer affair than the one held last year after yet another local council election defeat, when Mr Dalli was widely condemned for writing critical articles in newspapers.

Most of those who spoke said the reason for the defeat was the party’s national policies and that the results of the policies followed have not yet percolated down to the people.

Other speakers pointed out that a party in government loses votes from those who would have wanted some special treatment, such as early retirement or a request to be boarded out, government housing and so on and their request was refused.

Other issues held to be responsible for the defeat included local issues where party weaknesses, not addressed in time, led to heavy defeats.

Still, the general feeling among executive committee members was that the loss is recoverable especially now that no further hard decisions are expected. Some suggested reducing the surcharge and others a tax reform in order to give people more spending power.

In his conclusion, Dr Gonzi said he is committed to the policies being followed by the government and he is still convinced they will ultimately lead to fruition. “But if someone else thinks I am not capable of leading,” Dr Gonzi said, “then remove me”.

This led to the standing ovation and the conviction among those present that he is the undisputed leader of the party.

Xarabank survey reveals Sant more popular than Gonzi

The support given by the executive committee however proved to be short-lived. On Friday, a new Xarabank survey showed that for the first time, Labour leader Alfred Sant is more popular than Dr Gonzi.

In previous surveys, Gonzi edged Sant by a few percentage points, whereas this time round the MLP leader enjoys a lead of almost five percentage points over his political rival.

28.2 per cent mentioned MLP leader Alfred Sant as the new Prime Minister, while 23.5 per cent mentioned Lawrence Gonzi. 21.8 per cent refused to answer, and 18.4 per cent said they were undecided.

But only 10 per cent of those who did not vote said they wanted to register a protest against the government.

73.9 per cent of the sample said they did cast their vote in the 2006 local councils elections, while 25.6 per cent said they did not vote. 0.4 per cent did not answer.

Those respondents who said they did not cast their vote were asked for the reason why they did not. Thirty per cent said they are not interested in local councils, while 25 per cent said they were sick. Ten per cent said they did not vote so as to sound a protest bell against the government. Five per cent said they did not collect their voting document, and another five per cent said they were not satisfied with their local council’s performance.

Out of those who said they did not collect their voting document, some said they were not interested in voting while others said they had problems having the document delivered to their residence.

Asked to identify the country’s major problem, 19.7 per cent mentioned the surcharge in the water and electricity bills, while 16.7 per cent mentioned the cost of living. The next major problem was unemployment (15.8 per cent), followed by the lack of cash flow (11.5 per cent), a poor economy (5.6 per cent), the environment/waste (4.7 per cent), the roads (3.8 per cent) and taxes (1.7 per cent).