In his opinion piece “Ask the client” (TMID, 11 April) Alfred Mifsud, now also turned pollster for Labour’s leadership election, asserted that “The Labour Party machinery is clearly backing the candidature of Joseph Muscat” in the leadership race. Without sustaining this declaration, Mr Mifsud goes on to ask: “Have they made any research showing that Joseph Muscat can offer better prospects for winning the next election than the other candidates”.

This is both preposterous and pathetic.

Does Mr Mifsud honestly believe that a political party would go into such research in order to be in a position to influence the delegates or whoever is called to cast his or her vote in order to elect the candidate of their choice?

Mr Mifsud took great pains and spent money to organise a survey among a sample of 400 telephone interviewees chosen by age and location to be representative of the electorate. He did not like the results. His survey told him that Labour voters and decliners (generally considered pro-Labour people who refuse to disclose their voting preference for fear of recrimination from the incumbent government) are for Joseph Muscat and added his obsessive unfounded allegation that Joseph Muscat’s positive poll result was possibly influenced by the party machinery. Mr Mifsud, tell us how could this happen if yours was a random survey?

Mr Mifsud’s survey also told him that PN and floating voters prefer George Abela. This was enough for Mr Mifsud to have a go at Joseph Muscat and declaim that he “still needs to enrich his CV with executive experience and further doses of maturity before he would be able to successfully take Lawrence Gonzi head on sometime in the next five years”. Like many others, Mr Mifsud has fallen for the personality cult mania, forgetting that whoever is elected to lead Labour, he or she will have a strong party behind him or her, hopefully working without the fear of any snipers taking pot shots from within.

If Mr Mifsud is pitting Joseph Muscat against George Abela, the past political history of the latter in the Labour Party hangs round his neck like an albatross, while Dr Muscat’s age, intelligence and vision are the assets that Labour must tap to refresh and rejuvenate itself and make it electable in 2013.

Charmaine Calleja

St Paul’s Bay