Whether Labour likes it or not, who is the new Labour Party leader interests all Maltese, not just Labour supporters, just as who is the PN leader, the Archbishop, etc interests all Maltese.

And whether Labour supporters like it or not comments will continue to come fast and furious from all sides. Whether the Labour delegates will at the end take these comments in consideration still has to be seen, or whether they will react to these comments by refusing to take them on board, or by going the opposite way as psychologically they tend to do.

But even before the final contest, even before the contestants walk the proverbial cat walk, the party would do well to use the intervening weeks to analyse what, where and if possibly, who went wrong in the run-up to the election, how come Labour went into the campaign as the certain winner to come out the loser, how come so many votes which could have made the difference were left by the wayside and how come a tired, jaded party, hiding behind the coat-tails of its leader and with so many internal problems could at the end emerge victorious.

But even before this massive soul searching, there is something else the Labour Party needs to do, must do. And that is to simply take a long, hard, clear look at two relatively simple issues: itself as a political institution with commercial interests and itself as a media institution.

Of course, such soul searching should also be done by the Nationalist Party but it is our view that on both issues, and without reaching any levels of excellence, the PN is far ahead of MLP.

Both parties have related businesses: PN has a travel agency (which Labour used to have) and a printing press (ditto). PN companies file their returns to MFSA on a regular basis. MLP prefers to pay a small fine for not submitting its returns. Even here, on such a ground floor level, there is a significant difference, relatively the same difference there is between a company which keeps accountants and regular systems and a company managed by seat-of-pants management, not to say a cowboy management. At the end, such differences tell.

There is no way to tell about the financial strength or lack of strength of the two parties, which is a pity and a source of much worry. A radical reform of the Labour Party, far more than just choosing the leader, would be to outdo the Nationalist Party in openness and organizational clarity, just as in its time the building of the Centru Nazzjonali Laburista with its glass walls turned the party and its HQ into an icon of transparency.

Both parties have their own media empires, notably their television stations. Labour’s One TV has proved to be better than NET both on viewership as well as on the quality of certain programmes which have won for it the acclaim as the TV station of the year among other accolades. How come the TV station of the year did not translate into electoral majority is one question to be discussed.

Under the Sant-Micallef administration, the newsroom was kept at CNL rather than at Marsa, thus signifying and in reality being closer to the party leadership than the rest of the station.

One News is harder-nosed, far more a political tool than NET is to its owners. In a way, however, one now needs to ask whether this success contributed to Labour’s success or to Labour’s downfall. It could, thus be argued that One News spoke only to the converted, reinforced the feelings, the beliefs, the convictions of Labour supporters rather than made new converts. This is thus already part of the much-needed analysis of what went right and what went wrong in the 2008 campaign.

At the same time, however, one cannot deny that the hard, relentless, electioneering that went on both on the radio and on the TV news, especially the focusing done during the last weeks of the campaign turned off even hardened Labour supporters let alone the Don’t Knows and the uncertain voters.

Even now, when it has to adjust to a different reality, the One News team is visibly finding it difficult to focus and to keep an even keel: some days it is mute and mild while on other days it is vehement and hard. Some days it does not seem to have anything to say except rehash the two or three issues it keeps banging about while on other days it seems to lose track of stories and issues it could have gone to town on.

One last thing: although one understands the difficulty of doing otherwise, the Labour leadership campaign is so far being waged on other TV stations, on other media. It’s once again tiptoeing around the elephant in the room. Ditto for real discussions on what the campaign could have been like.

In times of trouble, and worse, it is natural for organizations involving human beings to close up to outsiders and to keep issues and decisions ‘within the family’. The issues facing Labour however are such they cannot be solved by any amount of closet-hiding or, worse, refusing to see the doctor when visibly in pain or sick.