In about a month’s time, at a date yet to be disclosed, the Malta Labour Party will hold its general conference. It is expected to tackle head on two decisive topics that will have a direct bearing on the party’s immediate electoral prospects, as well as Malta’s economic and political future.
The first relates to party policy on the endorsement or otherwise of the EU Constitutional Treaty. The second has to do with the party’s proposals for the regeneration of the economy.
A wide range of studies and consultation with the grassroots, and with various segments of civil society, has preceded the delegates’ conference. The conference is the supreme authority and will have the final say on both issues.
It will be a defining moment in many respects.
The MLP will dispose, once and for all, of the EU issue, which has prevented the party from focusing its attention on the urgent need to extricate the economy from its predicament.
A clear-cut definition of policy on both counts will bring to an end a long period of dissent and blood letting that had, inevitably, a debilitating effect
Above all, it will be a defining moment for the party leader, Dr Alfred Sant, who has often had to tiptoe delicately, at times even walk a tightrope, while he was exposed, all along, to the full blast of turbulence from Nationalist Party quarters.
Alfred Sant, who has been leading the party since l992 after taking over from Dr Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici, has given the MLP a new face, overcoming resistance from reactionary elements within and relentless demonisation from outside.
It took him no long time to lead the Party to office in l996, but he was stabbed in the back.
He has since demonstrated his durable quality by holding the Party together, notwithstanding sustained backbiting by frustrated pretenders and has, moreover, proved to be a match to the party in office, having won the last three electoral consultations of the past year.
Hard-working but self-effacing, Sant had to prevail over Dom Mintoff’s wrath from the beginning. Mintoff held forth in writing, under his own name, that “technocrats and bureaucrats were, like ringworms, eating the moral substance of the Party”. He sniped at “Labour’s brand new democracy” operating from its “crystal headquarters” and predicted that “the verdict of history will show how these new paper gladiators will have made less impact on Maltese socialism than a flea on an elephant’s back”.
Sant has weathered it all, and he was never tempted to invoke the personality cult to hold the party on course when inclement weather threatened the worst.
The very worst came, massively and consistently from the PN, which targeted Sant as unreliable and politically untrustworthy from the moment he took over the MLP leadership. Under Fenech Adami and under Gonzi, the PN played numerous variations of the same theme in an orchestrated, relentless crusade that involved the mobilisation of some constituted bodies at certain stages.
The worst is over. But, in politics, the unpredictable lies in wait.
Labour’s impending general conference could very well be the last hurdle Sant has to negotiate before the next general election.
The outcome will be decided, not by Alfred Sant, but by the majority of delegates who have hitherto stood by him in times of adversity. Their ranks are stout, sturdy and loyal.
If Sant carries the day, the uphill climb will be over, and the Labour Party machine will gear up for the next general election, with the wind blowing in its sails and with a disenchanted electorate well disposed for change.
At the next general election, the centre-piece of the electoral scenario will no longer be the EU; it will not be Alfred Sant. The electorate will be focusing on the beast created during the Nationalist government’s money no problem years. The electorate will be conscious of the fact that the biggest mistakes of the past PN administration have Gonzi’s fingerprints all over them.
That would be the moment when Alfred Sant will have to seize the wheel and make a dash for the Augean stables, which are badly in need of cleaning.
The impending delegates conference could very well prepare the ground for this. The challenge is not simply to do away with the odour of corruption and to redress flagrant injustices. It has to plan and provide clear-cut formulas that will ferret out corrupt elements and the perpetrators of injustice, all of whom poison the democratic process from entrenched or privileged positions.
It is the promise and the ability to deliver that will make the vital difference.
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