After losing the referendum on European Union membership in March 2003 and the national election held a month later, the Malta Labour Party seemed close to a big change.

That defeat meant that, at the next election, the MLP would have been in opposition for nearly 20 years, except for a brief tumultuous spell between October 1996 and September 1998.

Labour leader Alfred Sant, who had taken over from Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici, took the MLP to victory at the first opportunity but then was unable to finish the legislature and succumbed to two electoral defeats in 1998 and 2003, apart from the referendum.

It was perhaps a time for a change at the top, but Dr Sant contested the post of again, winning handsomely, to stay in charge.

Since then, the party has registered a string of successes at local level, winning the local councils elections of 2004, 2005 and 2006.

To them one must add the 3-2 win in the 2004 polls to elect Malta’s representatives in the European Parliament. It was irony at its best, considering the MLP’s opposition to EU membership, a policy that many say had cost it power a year earlier.

But these victories would all have been in vain if Labour does not win the coming general

election. It is useless winning the battles but not the war. And that is why there is so much at stake for the party later this year or early the next, and for Dr Sant in particular.

Dr Sant has been leading the party for 15 years now, but apart from those 22 months in office he has been leading a party in opposition. It seems unlikely that Dr Sant will retain the leadership if the party had to lose again.

It is rather unusual that the next election will pit against each other a party which has been in opposition for 18 of the last 20 years with a leader that has been there for 15, against a party that has been in office for so long but which will present itself at the national polls with a new leader, considering that Dr Lawrence Gonzi will be leading the Nationalist Party in a general election for the first time.

In a way, when the time comes, Dr Sant stands to lose more than Dr Gonzi does, because a defeat for Labour will in all probability mean the end of his political life, at least as MLP leader.

It has often been said that the Nationalist Party has won over the people’s support because its propaganda machine has managed to sell Dr Sant as being unable to lead the country. Even today, the PN still continuously reminds the people of what happened in those 22 months with Dr Sant in office. Since last October, the 10th anniversary of Dr Sant’s only electoral win, the PN media has been regularly reliving those Labour years, and we expect much more of this when the election draws even nearer.

Few seem to realise that it was not Dr Sant’s fault that his party won only a one-seat majority in 1996 – when the number of votes obtained that time should have allowed him more space in which to manoeuvre. But that is over now, and Labour must look ahead.

Labour seems to have learnt from its mistakes. Changes to the way it views matters – including, for example, its recent acceptance of the conversion to the euro in 2008 – have sometimes been described as u-turns by the Nationalist Party, but on the other hand they could also signify that Labour is prepared to accept today’s realities and is not willing to risk losing votes on subjects that have already been decided.

But whether this is enough for the MLP to win the next election is another matter. Labour is trying hard to prove that it is an alternative party, that it is capable of leading the country towards new heights, that it can provide a better way of living for the Maltese people.

What is sure is that the MLP cannot afford another defeat. Neither does Dr Sant.