The next few days shall prove to be days of reckoning for both sides right across the local political spectrum.
Next weekend the Nationalist Party will be laying the ground for the election of its new secretary general. In spite of all the talk of inclusivity, and the way in which Joe Saliba ‘warmed’ to the suggestion that Labour should elect its leader by an all party membership vote, contrary to the practice long prevalent in the Malta Labour Party that whenever any official is elected – from president down to the party’s financial secretary – all these candidates are elected by the secret ballot of the annual general meeting, the PN will be sticking to its long tradition of electing its secretary general from within a cabal of 60 members or so that normally consist of the national executive and other party organs’ representatives. While the Labour Party never meddled in the internal Nationalist politics as to who should lead the party or else serve as its officials, as was evident during the Gonzi-Dalli-Galea race for the leadership, the Nationalist Party has taken such an ‘interest’ in the Labour Party’s leadership selection process, that someone jokingly told me that the next thing they would be proposing would be to actually be given the ‘right’ to vote our new leader into office too.
Whether they supported certain candidates because they genuinely root for them or else in the hope of tarnishing their chances among Labour delegates is something I leave to your intelligent readers to conclude.
My only remark is whether all those committed Nationalist supporters who have expressed their preferences for certain Labour candidates as would-be leaders, would be prepared to actually consider voting for Labour if any of them had to be elected to lead the party.
Delegates will no doubt be keeping in mind that they will not only be voting for a Labour leader but for a Prime Minister in waiting who has the strength, the determination, the commitment, the drive and the resolve as well as the energy to take on Lawrence Gonzi head on without necessarily resorting to a negative, confrontational style of doing politics. But also without striking any unholy alliances with the PN or making compromises that can compromise our party itself.
As for the Nationalist Party they have a dual test.
Not only will they be choosing their party officials who are likely to be new faces – since at least two of them, the deputy secretary general and the information secretary have already migrated to ministerial secretariats, while Joe Saliba will be sticking to his long pronounced position of not running again after helping win three successful elections – but now that the debate regarding the Speech from the Throne has been concluded, the government will have to put its money where its mouth is, and try and convince one and all that they literally mean every word entailed in the government programme as outlined by the President of the Republic.
If some – not all – Nationalists found Alfred Sant’s speech in Parliament dour and depressing, there was not much enlightenment in Lawrence Gonzi’s much briefer concluding remarks in the House.
He failed miserably in convincing us how he intended going about it to ensure that we will have a government that is prepared to work together with the rest. Did he have solely civil society in mind or did he also have the opposition in mind too?
What is the real level of cooperation and respect that he intends to show the opposition in practice?
If PN commentators are anything to go by, a PN media guru recently argued on Radio 101 that one should not expect anything less than winner takes all, since in soccer even a team that wins the league on goal difference refrains from sharing the spoils with anyone else.
Although we are now hearing much talk of consensus in ICT and foreign affairs which we both welcome, such pledges would have made far more sense had they been made prior to the elections, to put everyone’s mind at rest that in the eventuality that the PN lost the elections, they would have stuck to a consensual approach too.
While the President promised that regarding housing, the government will improve and adapt existing schemes while introducing new ones, we saw certain schemes grinding to a halt simply because they exhausted their budgets in less than mid-year due to the election frenzy that held the PN in its firm clutches earlier on.
No indication was given by the Prime Minister as to when he will be implementing the tax reform that won them so much votes in the last election, simply because according to PN strategists it managed to target far more people than Labour’s proposals did.
In his winding up speech, rather than explaining how it proposed to engage with the opposition, the PM said that both sides should respect each other, while also respecting each other’s roles too. He went on to add that the government was there because the people had voted for it, and it was the one which had to take decisions.
At times he almost sounded like an Opposition Leader rather than a Prime Minister in office.
Labour has no intention of being destructive in its ways, but there was no point in Gonzi moaning about the fact that Labour had refused pairing in Parliament. It simply does not make sense to offer a pairing deal when voting against the Speech from the Throne, which is nothing but a by word for the new government’s programme. What we did is normal practice prevalent in all Western democracies, particularly those based on the Westminster model.
On a totally different matter I think one must show a word of gratitude to all the members of the election analysis commission that had been appointed unanimously by the MLP national executive and parliamentary group on 18 March this year. So much so that others who had been nominated, were quite rightly dropped after being objected to.
In my strictly personal opinion even if there might be certain flaws in their conclusions the report deserves merit since they exposed many weaknesses in our most pivotal and sensitive party structures which many of us were completely unaware of. On the other hand those party officials who disagree with its conclusions have every right to put the record straight as far as they are concerned. Once again on a personal level, while being disturbed at the organisational, logistical, tactical and strategic mistakes that seem to have been made right across the board, what is even worse and far more frightening is the growing realisation that there could have been elements in our midst who might have actually worked to sabotage Labour’s electoral chances. Either by omission or commission!
I feel proud in having been at the forefront in proposing that this report should be externalised by being published on the party web site, and am in full agreement with those who suggested that it should be also given in hard copy form to delegates.
After all in doing so we were merely implementing a recommendation, or to be more precise, a suggestion of the commission itself that recommended in their analysis that such a report would not be worth the effort unless it was cascaded down to all the party delegates. Something I sincerely was unaware of until I read the report itself.
Please compare this show of transparency on our part, with the secret and hidden Nationalist Party report of their resounding defeat during the Euro Parliamentary elections of 2004 which only saw the light of day thanks to a detailed expose’ – blow by blow – in the GWU newspaper l-orizzont. This was an all-time first for the MLP which it should be proud of.
It is now up to the new leadership of the MLP to implement all those proposals that it may consider feasible, particularly those proposals and recommendations of the 2003 analysis, which for reasons unknown were not taken on board so far. Prudence dictates that I should not fall into the easy trap of commenting on the report itself.
That I have done and will only do within party structures. Out of loyalty and respect to the party itself. But if anything can be said, it is evident that whoever is elected has more than a gargantuan task ahead of him or her!
E-mail: [email protected]
Leo Brincat is the Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs & IT.