Last week, the Malta Labour Party fixed another important day for its calendar of events, one that will bring to an end the process of a “new beginning” the party has undertaken following its defeat at the last election.

The MLP has already spent three gruelling months of internal campaigning following the resignation of Alfred Sant as leader soon after the 8 March loss. This led to the election of Joseph Muscat as new leader, while Anglu Farrugia and Toni Abela were subsequently elected as deputy leaders for parliamentary and party affairs respectively.

The three-month rudderless period was considered to be too long, also because during this time certain complications arose for the MLP, the most particular of which followed the decision to publish the report analysing the election defeat.

Now it seems that the party is taking a different stand, in the sense that it is bringing the administrative elections forward. They were due to be held in January next year, but last week the party national executive unanimously agreed to hold an extraordinary general conference on 4 and 5 August, a good five months before.

After the election defeat and during the campaign for the leadership, there were many calls for the resignation of the party administration. It was often said, even by people close to the MLP, that Dr Sant should not have been the only person to blame for the defeat. They pointed fingers at the party administration, most notably at secretary general Jason Micallef.

For its part, the party administration repeatedly said that it did not resign because such a resignation would have put the party in even worse chaos, as there would have been no-one responsible to organise the party leadership election. But, now that this is over, the party has chosen to take a short cut and hold the administrative elections in an unusual time of year, August, a time when normally most politicians take a holiday.

This however makes a lot of sense in the circumstances. To allow a seven-month gap in between the election of the new leadership and the election of the new administration would have led to so much speculation and internal strife that the party would have been unable to move on. It is only after this election takes place that the party could really turn a new chapter and concentrate on national matters, rather than internal affairs.

The three-month period between the general election and Dr Muscat’s taking over – and all that took place in between – must have served as an eye-opener to the alert new leader as he was the first to push for an earlier election for the top posts of the party administration.

As it happened, there will now be a total of five and a half weeks in between the day the decision was taken and the holding of the elections for the party administrative posts, which will be the third and final step of the party internal process after the election of the leader and two deputy leaders. No doubt, it will not be an easy time for the party.

This newspaper has already reported that there is a possibility that five people will be contesting Mr Micallef for the post of secretary general, certainly the most important appointment of the lot. Alfred Grixti has already declared his intentions to contest, Joe Vella Bonnici publicly announced his decision to contest on Monday night and another three also seem to be interested.

Speculation on who will be contesting this and other posts will abound over the coming weeks, and the prospective candidates will be doing the rounds to see what support they have before they hand in their nomination.

It will be a hot summer for the MLP, but it is necessarily so because the party needs to get going as quickly as possible.