For the last week or so, the media, as well as many men in the street, have been talking about the two speeches delivered by the PN leader in Floriana and by the MLP leader in Birzebbugia on Thursday September 20.
The MLP’s decision to hold a mass meeting on the same date as the traditional PN Mass meeting during the Independence anniversary celebrations was a conscious one. The MLP strategists must have figured out that the MLP could steal a march on the PN by having the media reporting both events at the same time.
The strategy badly misfired because of the poor performance of the MLP leader when addressing his party faithful at Birzebbugia. Worse still, both speeches were televised live and from the comfort of their home people could first follow Alfred Sant’s speech and then watch Lawrence Gonzi delivering his piece.
Comparisons are odious but the way the plan was set by the MLP strategists made comparisons inevitable. The upshot was that the MLP had unwittingly thrown a boomerang that hit it straight in the face and sent it reeling, unable to comprehend what had happened.
The Prime Minister delivered a coherent speech, communicating easily with his listeners, admitting the justified concerns of many citizens but rising above petty issues while giving a realistic, though optimistic, vision of Malta’s future, as he sees it.
In contrast, Sant’s speech was incoherent, void of any idea hinting at a promising future for the country under his leadership, while his address was peppered with silly antics and with an occasionally strange pitch in his voice. Why did he act in this strange way? Your guess is as good as mine…
People could not have failed to notice. Some comments – including jokes – I have heard, as well as others that have been posted on You Tube, are politically incorrect and I will refrain from repeating them here.
It is uncanny that at the same time this has been happening, there have been some, posing as independent observers, who were criticising the PN for having decided that Alfred Sant is one of the issues of the looming general election.
The fact is that episodes such as his Birzebbugia speech automatically make Alfred Sant himself an electoral issue, whether the PN likes it or not. After so many years of non-stop exposure, we can finally see what Alfred Sant stands for: and the clear answer is nothing. Perhaps now the “Don’t knows” have a politician to stand up for what they believe! The MLP plan for a “new beginning” indicates that their electoral manifesto promises to be as vague as possible. It will probably be full of blank spaces for people to scribble in whatever they fancy. The next Alfred Sant government, of course, will be committed to be tough on whatever is in the news!
Is it any surprise that when it comes to policy, Alfred Sant is making it all up as he goes along; just as he recently did with his policy of giving Cabinet rank – whatever that means – to the MCESD chairman? The promised 50 per cent reduction in the energy surcharge on water and electricity bills is as shameless as it is uncosted.
Someone I know has sardonically concluded that the only explanation for Alfred Sant’s disastrous leadership of the MLP is that he is secretly working for the other side and that, like some cold war spy, he is actually a Nationalist Party mole! Perhaps, the joke continues, when he was young he wandered into a PN club asking what he could do for the cause and somebody told him to infiltrate the other side, work up through the organization and do his utmost to ruin the MLP’s chances in general elections!

Joking apart, Alfred Sant is an electoral issue. His speech at Birzebbugia has shown that there is really no way that he will not be an issue.
Moreover, one can only conclude that the man has proved to be a millstone round the MLP’s neck ever since he was re-dimensioned by his miserable performance during his 22 months in power – culminating in the infamous clash with Dom Mintoff.
Just look at these figures: A relatively unknown Alfred Sant won the 1996 election. He then went on to lose two general elections in 1998 and 2003.
What was the electoral issue in 1998? It was Sant’s fitness to govern. Nothing else.
What was the electoral issue of 2003? Was it really EU membership?
Have a look at the numbers:
In that general election, the PN got 146,172 votes and Alternattiva got 1,929. If the PN had won because of the EU issue, one would assume that the “Yes” vote in the referendum – that was held five weeks before the general election – would have been 148,000, the total of the PN plus AD voters.
Surprisingly, this is off the mark. The “Yes” vote was only 143,094, that is 5,000 votes less than the PN and the AD obtained in the general election.
Assuming that all – or almost all – 1,929 AD voters voted “Yes”, there were at least 5,000 PN voters in the last election who did not vote “Yes” in the EU membership referendum. In Malta 5,000 is a lot of votes – it was practically the figure of the winning majority in the 1971, 1976, 1981, and 1987 elections.
Whichever way one looks at it, there must have been something more than the EU membership issue that gave the PN such a victory in 2003.
And part of that, or more – or is it all? – must have been Alfred Sant himself.
Many people in fact openly say that even though they might dislike the PN, they do not think that Alfred Sant is fit to be the country’s Prime Minister.
And that is what he confirmed with his speech in Birzebbuga.