Looking around during Thursday’s launch of Lino Spiteri’s book, it was very easy to reflect that cracks and fissures have developed in the two main parties.

On the one hand, the more obvious one, there was Mr Spiteri himself who was the candidate who stood against Dr Alfred Sant in 1992, who did not seem to reconcile himself to his fate after being beaten and who later, including in the book just launched, reiterated his conviction, shared by many others, that the 1992 election was flawed by irregularities. Then of course there was the matter of his resignation from office six months into his tenure, convinced he was living a lie and, as he says in the book, in a kind of prison.

Although the launch was attended by many from “old” Labour (not all “old” Labour is unworthy or corrupt) and “middle” Labour, the launch was heavily boycotted by “New” Labour from top to bottom. The few that were present, mainly as observers, were quite clear in their disapproval of Mr Spiteri and his decision to publish a book of memoirs.

But also at the launch was John Dalli, the biggest crack and fissure to have developed inside the Nationalist Party in recent times. His decision, last Sunday, to be interviewed by l-orizzont editor Frans Ghirxi in the Labour Party club in Zebbug raised not so much the Labour Party’s consternation, as another newspaper said, but that of his own party itself, so much so that the party’s secretary general, Joe Saliba, felt he had to go and listen.

The similarity between Mr Dalli and Mr Spiteri is uncanny: both contested a leadership election, both are convinced they were badly treated and lost unfairly and ultimately, both resigned from a ministerial post.

Whatever the rights or wrongs of their claims, a look around the Hilton Conference Centre room also showed that there is a wider PN/MLP tribal family or popular ideology than is at present represented by the “official” PN or MLP leaderships.

Coming, as we are to a general election without a strong national factor such as EU accession was in 2003, where every vote will count, it may well be that when the date is announced (and few believe that will be May 2008, as Joe Saliba told yesterday’s The Times) and the trumpet sounds, that all dissenters will rally to the flag. On the other hand, it could well be that the reluctant ones and the dissenters will in the end determine the outcome.

There are, of course, other cracks and fissures, especially on the Nationalist side. The vote in April 2003, which confirmed the Nationalist Party in power, came from the core Nationalist voters but this was augmented by those who so wanted EU accession that even though they were, for instance, Alternattiva voters, and liberals, or anyway not PN supporters, they felt there was no way to ensure the confirmation of the EU referendum than by voting PN. To which one must of course add the votes of normally-MLP supporters who felt they needed to vote PN to ensure EU accession.

Most of this extraneous support seems to have since disintegrated or anyway stopped supporting the PN.

As for the Labour side, the very fact of the unofficial boycott by New Labour of the Lino Spiteri book launch on Thursday seems to indicate that the dissent of the past years that was not just, or not really, about the party’s leadership but also about the party’s choices especially against EU accession have not really been mended by the party’s embracing EU membership and euro accession since then, nor by the party’s overtures to civil society far and wide.

In both cases, the parties’ leaderships must be brought to realise that it is perfectly useless to keep up this charade of speaking and wooing the middle ground at the same time that they still refuse to acknowledge and engage in real dialogue with the dissenters who have moved to the side.

Both sides, especially the Nationalist one, are past masters in electoral fudges and hastily assembled alliances that do not get beyond the ballot box. This may have worked well in the past but may fail this time. It may be that only the party, which opens up to dissent and engages in real and objective dialogue will emerge as triumphant in the polls.