In the last two months wherever I went to meet Labour delegates in Malta and Gozo, the word I heard over and over again was “unity”. Our delegates, members and supporters kept expressing their wish to stop people within the party tearing each other apart and instead work to unite the party. What they saw happening to their party in the last few weeks hurt them more than the electoral defeat in March, which came as a painful shock as for many Labourites and Nationalists, a Labour election win was a forgone conclusion.
I have the feeling that during our leadership election campaign we attacked our own party more than the PN attacked it during the last general election campaign! Now we all need to work hard to repair the damage and start a serious healing process. We all have to contribute to this process. We cannot simply say it is up to the new leadership to heal the divisions within the party, unite everybody and start carrying out our role as a robust opposition party and then building ourselves up as an alternative government.
In the last few weeks I have been asking delegates what kind of qualities they would like their new leader to have. Invariably they told me: the person who leads us must have the ability to unite us, must be good at listening with an open mind and an open heart and must have charisma to touch people’s hearts.
I remember being struck by Wangari Maathai’s words in her Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech in Oslo, Norway on December 10, 2004. Maathai is the woman who organized a popular movement in Kenya and planted trees to provide a livelihood for many families, promote democracy and peace, equality between men and women and stop environmental degradation.
She said: “Entire communities also come to understand that while it is necessary to hold their governments accountable, it is equally important that in their own relationships with each other, they exemplify the leadership values they wish to see in their own leaders, namely justice, integrity and trust.”
If we really want to unite and heal the party we must all give our contribution. We cannot expect others to bring people together while we do nothing to turn the party into a more open democratic space where people can feel at home, embrace different opinions and still work together in unity in diversity to gain the trust of most of the people living on our islands. We must make much better use of the talents and skills of all the people we have in our party and of the people who are not in the party but are willing to come forward and work with us to make our country a better place to live in.
As Labour leadership contenders we must now work hard to put the leadership campaign behind us and heal the wounds of division within the party. Every candidate enjoys the support of different groups within the party and in society at large, and the MLP needs the support of all of them, and more, in order to achieve a majority in the country. The divisions within the party hurt the thousands of people who support us and make us a weak opposition party, unelectable and make it easier for the PN to be arrogant and insensitive.
The Labour Party needs to win back more than 7,000 voters who used to vote for us and who did not vote for us last March. We need the vote of those Labourites who voted for EU membership five years ago and never came back to us. We also need to attract young and new voters everywhere in Malta and Gozo. We need to cultivate and engage all the talents we have within the party and beyond and who are very willing to help us become a credible alternative government.
The last election made it very clear to us that it is not enough to be a strong Opposition party. It is not enough to point out the shortcomings and failures of the PN government. We also need to persuade the majority that we are fit to run the country and we can do that only if we are united.