Last week I spoke about being a gracious winner…but the other side of that coin is being a good loser. Jason Micallef, with his performance on Xarabank, did untold damage to an already battered Labour Party. This is no time to be cocky or smarmy and – purely from an observer’s point of view – his behaviour was definitely out of place that day. From that programme and subsequent opinions in the papers, it is obvious that all hell has broken loose in the Labour Party and before all the rifts are healed, there is no hope.

A defeat is always a bitter pill to swallow – so three defeats in a row must be a nightmare.

At the moment the Labour Party is like a maimed lion (that lion analogy again) licking its wounds. It’s still reeling from the disappointing result and from the realisation that it faces another five years in the political wilderness. However, there was barely time to digest what has happened, and what needs to be done next, before the knives came out.

No sooner had the news that Alfred Sant resigned been made public, that the Labour Party infighting began, with everyone scrambling to find a scapegoat for the election defeat, while jostling for his/her position to be crowned the next leader.

It is interesting that the ones who seem to be the most “involved” in all this are members, supporters and the media of the Nationalist Party who are all eager to tell the MLP what to do. “We need a viable, electable Opposition” is their explanation (while conveniently skirting the issue that as long as the public lens is focused on Labour the more attention is diverted from the infighting in the PN itself). Aww, how sweet, Nationalist supporters want a strong Opposition leader because, let me guess, that way they will have an “embarrassment of choice” and might even be tempted to vote MLP next time.

Does anyone know the Heimlich manoeuvre? I seem to have choked on my breakfast again.

When it comes to damage control within their party, I have always found the Nationalists to be so much more clever – Labour always washes it dirty linen in public, so to speak, while the PN deftly closes ranks, pulls up the drawbridge of its fortress and you hardly hear a peep spoken in the media (even though there might be furious, raging battles taking place within the Stamperija walls).

Hindsight is 20/20

…or as we say in Maltese “kulhadd gharef wara”. There are so many Labour-leaning public figures coming out with their theories of why the party lost that it makes me wonder where they all were during the campaign? Did they keep silent in order to spitefully say “I told you so” or were they voicing their concerns and offering their help but not being listened to? All signs seem to point to the latter.

From everything that has been said and written it appears that the strategy being employed was in the hands of one or two people who were not open to criticism and were forging ahead with their own ideas, even though red warning bells were going off in every direction.

Contrast this to the analysis given by Richard Cachia Caruana in The Sunday Times last week, which gave a blow by blow account of a calculated, marketing strategy by the Nationalist Party that was responding and tweaking its campaign according to what the polls were telling them. Its almost military-like precision confirms what I have always felt about the way the PN operates – that it has the ability to “sell” people anything by packaging its “product” with lots of sparkle and gloss, telling the people what they want to hear. Whether it is going to be a case of all image and no substance is something that only time will tell.

Unfortunately, unlike a consumer who can complain and return a product because of false advertising, now that some people have “bought” the PN concept, there is no turning back.

And your point is…?

I find it a bit odd that one full week after the result Net TV was still showing those softy, fuzzy images of the Prime Minister and the cheering crowds who went to meet him in Valletta with the word GRAZZI superimposed on the footage. OK, we get it, Gonzi won. Is somebody perhaps feeling a bit insecure?

The Orlando factor

Joe Saliba’s assertion that the Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando saga could have cost them the election if Alfred Sant had made the Mistra contract public earlier is puzzling. It’s puzzling because it rather contradicts all the claims that people didn’t have enough faith in Sant to elect the Labour Party.

Basically, it seems he’s admitting that (a) the mud, which Sant was supposedly slinging, was not so muddy after all and that (b) political expediency led the PN to “use” Jeffrey who gave us an Oscar-worthy performance as the victim to gain votes. It is obvious that once the votes were in, the PN could not back-pedal fast enough to distance itself from the fine mess Jeffrey almost got them into.

This Jeffrey business reminds me strongly of what happened in the United States during the infamous Watergate scandal in the 1970s when it was revealed that the US President Nixon had lied to the public. Those who had voted for Nixon became the butt of every joke, in the sense that if you wanted to tell someone that he was a gullible or naive, all you had to say was, “oh, and I bet you probably voted for Nixon too, huh?”

No one likes to be deceived, so it is no wonder that so many angry voters are now demanding that Jeffrey should do the honourable thing and resign.

Dirty Harry?

Alternattiva Demokratika gave a poor showing in the Local Council Elections as well – so where does that leave those who are advising the party to forget national elections and stick to local government?

Many voters have obviously lost confidence in AD and there are several reasons for this. It can be attributed to the Harry-Vassallo-didn’t-fill-in-his-VAT-forms incident, which spun out of control, egged on by the deliberate misinformation, which is still being repeated by the PN, that Harry failed to pay VAT he had collected from clients. Harry the clean politician had overnight become “Dirty Harry” – it was a false perception but it was enough for those not bothered to verify the facts. He was accused of playing the victim and using his wife and kids to gain sympathy, and then punished for it (yes, there’s the irony).

Some have pointed out that AD spent so much time attacking the two big parties that they neglected to give voters a valid reason to vote for them. Others continue to maintain that Malta doesn’t even want a third party; that AD is washed-up, should call it a day and stick to tree hugging.

Then there was the fact that AD was warming up to Labour and flirting with the idea of a coalition – which annoyed those who would prefer to see AD stand alone, or if has to flirt with anyone, it should be with the Nationalists, mhux ovvja?

The double blow of the national and local council election results means the future of AD is hanging by a thread, and it will be a tough climb back from the precipice, especially in the current climate.

AD, in case you haven’t noticed, has become the new target practice for those well-aimed poison arrows.

So whoever takes over from Harry (just like anyone who takes over from Alfred Sant) had better invest in a thick suit of armour.

Phew, that was close

There are still people shaking in their boots at the “close call” of having Sant (and gasp! Labour!) in government. Has anyone noticed however, that despite losing, there were no Labour supporters wreaking havoc across the country in furious revenge as so many “predicted”? (Or was the rumour that was circulating referring to violence if Labour won…I can’t seem to get this story straight).

I’m pointing this out because downright scaremongering played a heavy role in this election campaign, creating a lot of unnecessary panic. I actually met people who said, “We won’t be able to leave our homes if Labour wins.”

But hey, I guess all’s fair at election time, right?

Friendly media

Saturday Night Live, for those not familiar with American television, is a satirical show that takes pot shots at everyone. It has such popularity and influence that both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have taken part in sketches in which they make fun of themselves (oh for such a day to arrive in Malta!).

The running joke about Obama is that the media has been much kinder towards him than it has to Hillary. To drive this point home, one parody involved journalists during a debate asking him if he needed anything, “are you sure, and do your pillows need to be fluffed?”

Now what on earth does this all have to do with us, you might ask?

Oh, nothing.

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