Claude Falzon was the man behind mistaken polls which had Labour leader Alfred Sant and secretary-general Jason Micallef believe Labour would win the election by 4% or 12,000 votes.
The polls were known only to Sant and Micallef, and campaign manager Benny Borg Bonello. None of the party’s top officials were given the precise figures, but simply told that Labour was heading towards “a comfortable win”. Labour would lose the election by some 1,600 votes, even though the Nationalists today are only effectively governing with one extra seat in parliament.
Claude Falzon, who is based in Brussels as a translator, was also instrumental in rubbishing other public polls namely the MaltaToday polls which recorded a small but significant majority for the PN in the run-up to the election.
Labour’s lead started to waver when MaltaToday’s survey registered a slight 1.8% lead for the PN between Monday 18 and Wednesday 20 February, as Lawrence Gonzi started intensifying his onslaught on Labour’s reception class proposal – the proposal had itself been drawn up simply as an attempt to allow for overtime for staff in schools.
Ironically the Labour proposal was fished out from its voluminous electoral programme by then education minister Louis Galea who ironically, gave the PN a winning electoral plank but then failed to get elected when the PN’s electoral campaign excluded ministers from taking centre-stage.
Secretary-general Jason Micallef was so certain that Labour would win the election, that he did nothing to quash the belief among bookies and gamblers that Labour was heading to victory, leading to large amounts of cash being lost on the false premise of a Labour win.
What is more revealing is that Micallef’s overconfidence led him, together with Alfred Sant, to postpone the damning revelation implicating Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando in a dubious land deal, till the very last day of the campaign. Labour was in possession of the details from the very start of the campaign, but left it to the very last moment.
Micallef was said to have kept all the cards to his chest throughout the entire electoral campaign, captaining Labour’s campaign without any consultation with other top officials.
Sant’s health condition had aggravated the leader’s link with the other officials, allowing Micallef to have a free hand in all campaign decisions. He earned the criticism of several Labour officials, including education secretary Wenzu Mintoff who said the campaign had been too negative and not forward-looking.