The Labour report arrived with some of the most jam-packed 99 pages of political bungling local pundits will ever read. Labour is clearly in disarray, but Lino Spiteri, former Labour minister, and former leadership contender, still musters an impassionate analysis of Labour’s 2008 fiasco. He doesn’t talk about the report’s insight into the electoral office’s operations, saying the matter is an internal one for Labour. But insofar as the other things mentioned in the report, well… there’s nothing new for Spiteri, who goes as far as to say it’s the stuff that everybody knew about for many years, especially those who have observed the party closely.
But the gaping hole in the ship’s hull is undoubtedly the issue of credibility, Spiteri says, starting from the 2003 election loss, Sant’s re-election after resigning and then changing his mind, the development of factions inside Labour… Spiteri even says Labour didn’t need a report to point out that election campaign was “disastrous”.
“The writing on the wall was there in capital letters. So the report came as no surprise, except for the figure which the report’s authors presented as the 7,300 Labourites who did not bother to vote. Nobody had been aware that the percentage of Labourites which did not vote was higher than anticipated. The report issued by Richard Cachia Caruana and Lawrence Zammit a week after the election on 16 May on The Times made it clear that in the last days of the election, they started picking up on a strange feature that those who indicated they would not vote were split down the middle.”
Spiteri concedes that even he was caught napping on this factor alone. “I thought Labour voters would turn out in droves, and that the abstentions would be on the side of the PN. That wasn’t the case and the MLP put a figure to it. That’s incredible for a party in opposition, with a government on the run. To be unable to muster its whole strength, let alone to penetrate among the young and floating voters, is quite incredible.”
And incredible as the first samples on that momentous election day sounded, when the PN were heading towards their narrowest of victories against all perceived odds, it seems that what was less incredible was the Sant factor, and the issue of credibility, confirming the misgivings of those voters who still weren’t completely won over by the Labour leader. Spiteri himself makes no bones about this matter.
“Well, when a party loses an election the major factor is always the leader. When the PN lost the election in 1971 they quickly realised they had to change their leader, so there is nothing new in pointing the finger at the former leader of the MLP.
“The report doesn’t quite say he is the main factor of the defeat. But it is very obvious what they are saying – it was very harsh in its description of the goings-on in Labour as a black comedy, and at pointing at the lack of credibility of the leader. What more can you say?
“My surprise was that people had been saying the leader had to be changed, ‘but now we have this leadership, so let’s get Labour elected’. Why didn’t it happen? That’s the question for the future.”
In the fallout of Labour’s electoral defeat and the ensuing report, it was leadership contender Michael Falzon who took great umbrage at the report’s findings, accusing it of bias in his regard, and launching a tirade against the decisions of his comrades.
And while Spiteri says that as part of the leadership there is responsibility, partly, to be assumed, he asks why he didn’t resign earlier on.
“Frankly, the way he has been talking about being sidelined, about how he wasn’t shown certain information and opinion surveys he requested… he should have resigned, long ago. He made it clear the so-called leadership ‘team’ was not functioning as it should. If he was so sidelined so much so he didn’t even have information and access to it, information that was basic such as opinion surveys, what was he doing there? Michael is a very sound man and he is a man of integrity…”
His relationship with the media is not as graceful, I put it to Spiteri.
“No, he comes across very well in the media. Michael’s problem is that he puts too much weight on what the party says – he always emphasises that what he is doing or saying is with the party’s approval. For God’s sake, he’s his own man, and he should speak his own mind now and then.”
Falzon’s outburst certainly blurred the distinction between secretary-general and deputy leader for party affairs, a position that appeared overlapping at times. Spiteri say that it comes out that he was totally ignored.
“Had he left at that time he would have done himself a lot of good and it would not have meant that he left the party – he would have left his post. If he wasn’t being allowed to fulfil the role of deputy leader for party affairs, he shouldn’t have stayed.
“If a man feels he has been first ignored in a very negative manner, secondly that he has been stabbed in the back, you don’t expect him to go down gracefully. Julius Caesar didn’t go down gracefully. Falzon has been attacked in a very harsh manner, so you expect him to answer in an equally harsh manner. I understand him. It is easy to see where he’s coming from and where he is going. He is coming from being a very hurt person, someone who was sidelined, practically the only person mentioned by name in the defeat report – which I must say, is one of the deficiencies of the report.”
Unequivocally for Spiteri, the 2008 election loss was a result of the last five years. “It was there for the taking, and Labour lost it. The defeat didn’t come about on election day or when voting time was extended, but because Labourites didn’t vote for the MLP, and it did not win a decent share of 33,000 new voters that came on stream in 2007 and 2008.”
Jason Micallef on the other hand, Spiteri notes, should have offered his resignation. “None of them (the rest of the administration) resigned, so why should any of them? What they should have done when the leader quite rightly resigned, and quite wrongly stayed on as Leader of the Opposition, was to offer their resignation, but not leave the party unmanned, and demonstrate they recognise their share in the defeat. Especially since Sant did the right thing to resign.”
Spiteri says the new Labour leader will face the “very serious” challenge of Labour’s factionalism, which is he will need the skills and ability to draw people together. “Firstly, heal the leadership wounds – although they say they are friends and doing it for the party, the contenders are contesting for themselves. And those who will not be elected will feel hurt in some way or another. Secondly their backers will be even more hurt. The new leader will have to draw the party together, making it clear he is able to work, that he won’t look at the past and leadership race with rancour. Which shouldn’t be difficult. But how to get the various factions together will be more difficult: if he or she starts with a strong hand, then it will be possible.”
George Abela, Spiteri says, has had the role of being an effective deputy leader in the past, although no successful leadership winner will find the job of uniting Labour any easier. But he also dispels the notion that age will be important in this game.
“It’s the leader’s personality and style. He can be young and wise; not so young, and the other way round. What the question refers to is whether Joseph Muscat has the right age, or if George is too old. I don’t think age matters – experience will, obviously, it would be silly to ignore that. But what will really matter is how, whoever he or she is, will go about it, how they move forward and tackle the situation.
“Because once you become leader, you change: if George Abela becomes leader he will become younger in people’s eyes, and if Joseph Muscat becomes leader he will become older in people’s eyes. The leader is the leader, you know. There is an aura which, properly used, can attract people, by exuding a gentle authority and persuasion. And that’s what will count – how the leader will go about his job of healing and uniting the party, and making it a vehicle that will run, rather than jam into a wall like it has done once again this election.”
I put it to Spiteri that the outburst against the Schulz endorsement of Joseph Muscat sounded strange. What was so shocking about it?
“What was wrong with Herr Schulz and the way he went about it, is the fact that he is the president of the parliamentary group of socialists in the European Parliament. When you are in that position you don’t come to Malta and say, ‘I’ve come to back ‘my’ MEP’. He is not ‘his’ MEP, for heaven’s sake. He harmed Joseph in saying that. He could have said, ‘he’s a friend of mine, he’s able’, rather than in his official capacity. And to think of Rasmussen’s reply to the press, that Schulz was countering some form of right-wing opposition… that made me blush. Joseph can hold his own, surely.”
In talking about Schulz, Spiteri even says there was no need for “people coming from outside to endorse or criticise, we can do it ourselves, and Joseph has his endorsements from a wide spectrum of Maltese”, and with a wry smile adds, “We didn’t need this insertion. There was no need for this ‘alien corn’, to quote Somerset Maugham,” referring to the novelist’s fictional chronicles of British colonialism.
It is hard not to hide this antipathy towards the foreign insertion, although Spiteri quickly quips he is not xenophobic. “Maybe for people of our generation, we don’t like other people coming in and tell us what to do. It would have been like George Abela getting someone from Spain to speak of his role as member on FIFA. So what? It’s not because he is an outsider. It’s just unrelated. It’s unnecessary. A person projects himself: if you have others doing the persuasion for you, then it suggests you’re not doing it well enough for yourself.”
Spiteri describes George Abela as a close friend (“he’s like a brother to me”). Irrespectively of his friendship, Spiteri says Abela has the qualities Labour needs at the moment: “he has the skills to build teams that will help Labour reassess policies, not ditch them; to attract people to work with him, the party, and ultimately the government. I see this as a national factor, not as a contest between five people. It is important to have alternating governments in Malta, and to have an opposition that is electable. My personal opinion is that George Abela will give Labour their best chance.”