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The winners in Labour’s victory last Sunday were Dr Alfred Sant and Dr Lawrence Gonzi. The good results secured their position as the party leader. Dr Sant knew that a poor show in the elections would cost him his chair whereas Dr Gonzi knew that only a poor show would give him the power to reshuffle the cabinet and send the message that he is in control.
There is no doubt that the Nationalists did not want Alternattiva to win the fifth seat. There is also no doubt that the surveys of both political parties showed that Alternattiva was a strong candidate for the fifth chair. Up till the last minute of the campaign they kept repeating that a vote for Alternattiva would mean ‘il terzo gode’ meaning Labour will benefit. They left no doubt in anyone’s mind that their enemy in these elections was not Alfred Sant but Alternattiva. In effect their campaign was not centered on Alfred Sant but on Alternattiva.
Whereas in the general elections campaign, the Nationalists concentrated on the person of Alfred Sant and pictured him as the bad guy, in this campaign they left him to conduct his campaign quietly and even allowed their allies to treat him with a velvet glove. Take Bondiplus and Xarabank – they both did an excellent job at portraying the human aspect of Alfred Sant. It is so ironic that he opened the doors of his private life to ‘Where’s Everybody?’ The same Where’s Everybody? that he boycotted until last year. I cannot recall that he ever did the same to any of his party journalists. Even the other known freelance or so-called independent journalists did not bother him this time.
Dr Sant seems to have reciprocated by exposing John Dalli in the case of the Iranian shipping line. The relationship between Gonzi and Dalli is well-known and whoever passed on the information to Dr Sant had to have the blessing of somebody in Government as no Nationalist would risk his bread and butter for Alfred Sant or the Malta Labour Party. Needless to say, this continued to secure Gonzi’s position as the party leader and will someday reward the sacrificial lamb.
It also secured the position of the Nationalist party in the next general elections. Labour promised employment if they get elected in the European Parliament. Now they know that the ball is in their court, they have the majority and the responsibility is on them to fulfill what they promised. You will remember that during the first press conference after the elections Dr Sant invited the Government to set up a task force or a committee made up of representatives of the Government and of Labour engaged in providing more jobs to Malta. Dr Sant knows that he and his party have a great responsibility to deliver in the next four years and he also knows that if he fails, the Nationalist party will have a field day.
Rest assured that from now on, every time that Labour argues that the negative effects of membership are the result of the bad treaty that the Nationalist Government negotiated with the European Union the Nationalists will reiterate by saying that Labour has the majority of seats and they are to blame. This is why I believe that Alternattiva posed a bigger threat to the Nationalist Party than Labour. Imagine that the fifth seat went to Alternattiva and membership is painful in the next elections, how can the Nationalists face the electorate and accuse Alternattiva when they and Alternattiva worked hand in hand for membership? With Labour the scenario will be different. In this case the Nationalists would have strong arguments, backed by a strong media machine that will convince the electorate that it is the inefficiency of the Labour MP’s in the EU Parliament that is to blame for the fiasco and not EU membership.
I am sure that the three Labour MEP’s who are now part of the Party of European Socialists all have the EU at heart. They always loved the EU and I am sure that they will do their utmost so that their adventure between Brussels and Strasbourg will be a success. How they are going to co-ordinate with the other two, is another matter, although let’s face, they should not find it hard to do so now that the gap between the two parties is insignificant.
There is no doubt that the five MEP’s who were elected were the five endorsed by their respective party. The party machine played a very big role in having them and not the others elected. I personally did not agree that members of parliament or trade unions or party officials should endorse a particular candidate, after all the emphasis in the campaign was on L-ahjar team. There is no doubt that the CNL’s (Centru Nazzjonali Laburista) favourite was Joseph Muscat. He had the support of George Vella till the last mass meeting in Zejtun, was allowed to continue with his daily radio programme until a couple of weeks before the elections, continued his work as editor of maltastar.com and his wife as Alfred Sant’s personal assistant did her share as well.
Attard Montaldo was elected thanks to his abundance and his show at the mass meeting in Mosta and in Gozo when he described Alfred Sant as a saint - his only means of combating the bad propaganda that was being circulated against him. Attard Montaldo knew that if he were to make it he had to hammer into the minds to the Labourite voters that he was loyal to the leader.
The Nationalists did this more subtly. They gave the impression that they are after emancipation by allowing two women to contest the elections but then they failed to use the party machine to ensure that one woman is elected. Even in the media I do not think that the eight candidates were given the same exposure by the party. On the other hand it was a good decision on their part to prohibit recommendations from their members of parliament and publications of paid adverts by ‘friends’ of the candidates. A friend of mine told me how she went to place an advert for a particular candidate in a Maltese newspaper and she was not allowed to do so because of the party policy. How is that for independent journalism?
It will be interesting to note if the 9.32 percent increase in Alternattiva’s votes came from people who voted Nationalist in the last general elections. I am sure that the parties will do this exercise diligently just as they will monitor those who did not bother to vote. However, what worries me is not whether the majority of these people came from Labour or Nationalist camps, but why did Labour fail to attract more voters and why did the people opt for Alternattiva and not for Labour.
Sant had insisted in the campaign that a non-use of the vote is a Nationalist vote and 18 percent of the voters or more that 40,000 did not understand or took notice of him. Labour must understand that as a party in opposition it has to work much harder if it wants to win the next general elections. If redundancies, loss of working conditions, VAT and tax increases attracted more voters to vote Alternattiva than to vote for the party that can be the next government, then Labour has a big problem indeed.
The party is now over. It is now the time for Labour to prove that it can deliver what it promised the electorate in these elections. Failure to do so could lead to defeat in the next general elections. And if that happens, the Labourites will clean up the party with a vengeance!
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