NEWS | Wednesday, 26 November 2008

PRINT THIS ARTICLE

Muscat’s earthquake will change the face of the very electoral college that elected him six months ago, only to put an albatross around his neck two months later by re-electing Jason Micallef as his secretary-general. Will this be enough to undo the damage inflicted by party delegates in the past six months? asks James Debono

Ever since electing Joseph Muscat as their leader, Labour delegates have unwittingly acted as the Nationalist Party’s fifth column – first by electing two militant mavericks as deputy leaders, namely Anglu Farrugia and Toni Abela; then by resurrecting Alex Sciberras Trigona as the party’s international secretary, and finally committing hara-kiri by re-electing Jason Micallef as secretary-general, despite being at the centre of Labour’s electoral loss.
Yet what else can one expect from an inward-looking body composed of mainly ageing men hailing from Labour’s strongholds in the south, and detached from middle Malta?
A MaltaToday analysis of Labour’s delegate list revealed that it’s these delegates who predominate in the MLP’s electoral college. In fact 56% of the delegates are over 59 years old, and only 15% are under 35.
With the exception of Gozo, which is represented by a strong contingent of 87 delegates, southern MLP-leaning districts tend to be more represented than PN-leaning northern districts.
Significantly the eleventh and eight districts – which include Mosta and Birkirkara, Malta’s two largest urban centres – are the two most under-represented districts.
This reflects the fact that these large two urban conglomerates have only one Labour club each. Yet while the Bormla branch is represented by 11 delegates, the much bigger Birkirkara is represented by nine.
This suggests that, Gozo apart, localities and districts with a Nationalist majority are the least represented in the party’s highest body. This is a self-inflicted handicap for the party in reaching out to non-Labour voters.
Now Muscat promises to increase the number of women from 28% to 40% while increasing the number of young people. And crucially, none of the local and district officials will be allowed to serve for more than 10 consecutive years.
And by taking a leaf from Maoist re-education, delegates will be briefed on the latest developments in political thought through a single brand new think-tank, the social democratic foundation IDEAT; a possible admission of the intellectual poverty reigning among the 900 delegates who elected him to the party’s helm. Not very democratically, the motion also enables the party to appoint “experts” as delegates for a period of a year to contribute to the party’s policy.
And if Muscat has his way, the party will finally rid itself of its greatest anachronism: an organisation dedicated to the political education of young children known as the Brigata Laburista. Born as a tool to counter Catholic indoctrination with Mintoffian values, Labour’s own merry band of marching majorettes and boy scouts degenerated into an army of pom-pom girls in the 1980s, only to drift into obscurity during the Alfred Sant days. Ironically, over the last decade it was the Nationalist Party which started having no qualms on using children as pawns in the political game by displaying them on billboards.
Another anachronism set for abolition is the vigilance and discipline board which shall be replaced by a code of ethics enforced the party’s national executive.
Muscat’s greatest contribution to Labour would be that of anchoring his party in the centre-left after years of ideological disorientation as the party drifted towards the right under Alfred Sant. And anyone joining the MLP as a member will now have to declare his loyalty to social democratic beliefs. Where this leaves self-proclaimed conservatives like Adrian Vassallo, who recently expressed his preference for US Presidential candidate John McCain because Obama was too liberal for his liking, remains to be seen.
Ultimately the most drastic reform proposed by Muscat is the election of the next party leader by a national congress composed of all party members. Ironically it was leadership rival George Abela who first proposed that Alfred Sant’s successor should be selected by members. But jealous of their power and afraid of an organisational nightmare, the party delegates rejected the proposal in May. Safe in his position as leader, Muscat is now proposing that his successor will be elected by common members, thus depriving delegates of their ultimate power.
Yet that will not be the only occasion of direct democracy in the MLP. The congress will also be meeting on the eve of the general election to discuss the party’s electoral programme. The party still has to explain how it will manage such a mammoth assembly and whether normal party members will have any real power to table their own proposals.

jdebono@mediatoday.com.mt

PRINT THIS ARTICLE

Any comments?
If you wish your comments to be published in our Letters pages please click button below.
Please write a contact number and a postal address where you may be contacted.