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Matthew Vella
Just exactly one year ago, on 1 May, a van trundled into Freedom Square, Valletta, where Labour hold their annual May Day celebration, and dispensed small placards to Labour supporters with the words: ‘Dr Sant, Malta still needs you’.
It had been less than 30 days into the Malta Labour Party’s second electoral disaster. Hinting at resignation after having been denounced at the hustings in both the EU referendum and the general elections, Alfred Sant was ‘saved’ at the eleventh hour by the faithful multitudes in a carefully stage-managed stunt.
A year after, it is paper roses that are being dispensed to gathered supporters, but Sant has not yet had a proper breather: his party has gone through a radical purge ousting staunch acolytes Jimmy Magro and Manuel Cuschieri, replacing the party administration with younger faces eager for change.
Now he could face a renewed assault. Yesterday Sant appealed to Labour voters to come out and vote on the 12 June European Parliament elections, urging supporters not to be fooled by “those who tell you not to vote in June”, presumably alluding to saboteurs seeking to erode the foundations of his leadership: “You would be playing the Nationalists’ game,” he warned.
And it seems this election could well decide Sant’s future within the MLP. Failure to ride the popular wave of discontent means Sant faces attacks from all sides: both within his party, and from outsiders and hopeful returnees who have not yet completely severed their ties with Labour.
Before Sant’s arrival, Labour supporters are parading about in carnival floats circling Freedom Square, the piazza that commemorates one of Labour’s erstwhile leaders’ most triumphant of victories: the departure of the British forces in 1979 when Dom Mintoff was in power.
Loud techno music, not L’Internazionale, blares out the speakers. TV producer Alfred Zammit eggs on supporters with generic slogans and chants. Young supporters, some wearing Che Guevara t-shirts, clamber over a float depicting a battleship with the slogan ‘Military Tourism’ hinting at the decline in tourist arrivals and the increase in military naval fleets berthing at the Grand Harbour. There is also the Brigata Laburista, the General Workers Union, and even Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici leading the Front Maltin Inqumu with placards saying: “The EU accession package is bad – Let’s change the agreement”.
“This is the new reality we have to work with,” Sant says about respecting the electorate’s decision in 2003 to forge ahead with a Nationalist government and EU accession. “And we shall work to reap every advantage possible from the EU, and minimise any form of disadvantage. This is our mission… We have eight valid candidates for the European Parliament and we have to look forward to this election. We have always said the truth and we will continue doing so and defend workers’ and their families’ interests.”
All around, Sant’s new publication, ‘Socialism in our Times’, is making the rounds, a collection of lectures on socialism’s roots and its development in Malta. How far this will serve as inspirational fodder to whom Sant wants convinced that he is still a strong leader, is yet to be seen.
This time Sant appealed for unity and courage: “There is another way ahead which the MLP can give and we shall be doing our utmost in defending workers in these difficult times,” he said about the continuous spate of redundancies that has seen workers from VF Clothing and W.E.T Automotive Systems, and others within Air Malta, the drydocks and Maltapost threatened with the same fate: “They are trying to blame the workers for the problems affecting these companies. But it is the management style employed in these companies at the hands of Nationalist government-appointed directors that should be looked at.” He said about the Gozo Channel that the company’s losses were fruit of Gozo Minister Giovanna Debono’s sole interest in accumulating votes.
Sant’s speech lasts little longer than twenty minutes, and the flock disperses as quickly to head back home.
Labour supporters are vocal about the country’s economic stagnation, and the lack of jobs in such a period of high unemployment. But they also fear an invasion of foreign workers, informed not only by the reality of the EU’s freedom of movement, but also due to the latent xenophobia in Labour’s hangover from Mintoff’s ‘Malta l-ewwel u qabel kollox’ patriotism.
Maybe Sant’s treatise on Maltese socialism can give the answers on why Labour today can only offer techno, carnival floats and Alfred Zammit to its voters.
matthew@newsworksltd.com
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