Last Monday’s vote at the Labour headquarters that served to re-elect Jason Micallef as secretary-general goes a long way at confirming that this party seems to be as determined as ever to remain perpetually in Opposition.
The fact that the man who is squarely responsible for the MLP’s electoral defeat together with Alfred Sant is re-elected to this essential post, goes to show that the party delegates just learn nothing from their party’s disastrous experience over the last decade.
That accompanying Micallef back to the Labour glass house there is not only the same Stefan Zrinzo Azzopardi as president, but also Alex Sceberras Trigona – a veritable political dinosaur and an avowed anti-EU stooge – has made a farce out of Labour’s new political season, despite its new leader’s apparent determination.
Last Monday’s outcome has undermined any hint of reform the party’s new leader intended to embark upon. Just as the party makes one step forward with a fresh face as its new leader, it anchors itself in the liabilities of the past that have only served to make it one big joke even among the Labourites themselves. How Labour delegates seem unable to fathom the problem within their own party, after their 2008 defeat, is mind-boggling.
No amount of smiles and nice-sounding words will ever change anyone’s perception of Micallef, as much as nothing could ever rehabilitate Alfred Sant after the 2003 fiasco. This is the truth which the delegates have obstinately refused to acknowledge and to which they have yet again closed their eyes inexplicably.
The damning electoral defeat report illustrates perfectly how Jason Micallef, a man more driven by image rather than content, behaved under pressure, in the crucial weeks of the election, when he was somehow smelling victory.
He is the same man who refused to discuss electoral polls with his own colleagues, who showed his comrades politely and impolitely that their contribution was not needed by the party, and who showed his critics in no uncertain terms that they have no future if he is re-elected. Why he should change at all now, that his election has dealt a blow to internal opposition, is anyone’s guess.
The divisiveness this man has instilled within his party, from the former deputy leader downwards, as one influential MP after the other was clamouring for his removal, is perhaps unprecedented. And despite garnering the simple majority of 370 votes, a total of 467 expressed themselves against his re-election.
Joseph Muscat has a lot to answer for. However he decides to sugar-coat this circus, his party has once again offered the best arsenal for attacks from the PN.
The past has for long been Labour’s worst enemy, and all the MLP does is to go straight into the past and revive it in an embarrassing re-enactment; from the recent disastrous past with the face of Jason Micallef, to the obsolete, archaic past in the image of Sceberras Trigona.
How Muscat will now get the party back in business, as he prematurely declared upon his own election, remains a big question mark. It is a bit like a bankrupt chairman who relaunches a moribund company with the same failed business plan, approved by the myopic, narrow-minded majority of shareholders.
What is sure is that his honeymoon is over.