The Malta Labour Party has an insurmountable problem when they vote for the administrative posts on 4 and 5 August. If they choose the Alfred Sant group they will have a rebellion from within; on the other hand if they try and choose the Labour oldies like Sciberras Trigona and Co. they will end up worse.

People are not gullible; it is not enough to make stage appearances pacing back and forth while addressing meetings. Saying one thing on a Monday and changing it again on a Tuesday, as what happened about the Malta Drydocks, is worse.

The last farce we witnessed was the stand taken by Labour about the rent law and the local councils reform are cases in point. As regards the latter the MLP have no right to play the expert when everyone knows that the Labour Party was against local councils from the beginning and it took them six years to start participating in local elections. The only reason that made them participate was that in 1997 the so-called independent local councillors lost heavily. In 1998 their interest was not the local councils or the various localities but simply their party interests.

Labour have no right to expect being the local council champions; they made a mess when the people gave them a majority.

The Nationalist Party introduced local councils in 1993 and sustained them financially without interfering with partisan politics. Even now the MLP secretary general tried to interfere in the Mellieha local council’s mayor duties regarding the mayor’s prerogative of assigning duties to the councillors. It is amazing how Jason Micallef calls the duties assigned to the former Mellieha mayor as insulting and says nothing about the Mosta former mayor Joe Demartino who was given no responsibilities at all by the Mosta Labour mayor.

Labour should learn to leave local councils out of partisan politics. That is what the PN does. But Labour never learn. No wonder the people keep ignoring them.

Pawlu Aquilina

St Paul’s Bay