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Dubai discredited one-half of Labour’s deputy leaders. Sooner or later it will be Michael Falzon’s turn
Back in the time of the general elections of 1998, the blame for the blunder had been placed upon Mintoff; in the general elections of 2003, the blame was for some time placed upon the General Workers Union and the European Union issue – and I won’t be surprised if in the next general elections there will be another scapegoat. Only who will it be this time?
Politics is a dirty word in Malta and the focus of our politicians seems to be more shifted onto the needs of the party administration, than on the needs of the party and of the country. There seems to be a pattern of sequences within the political parties to get out of the way those people who can be detrimental not to the party, but to the party’s administration. I still do not understand why they continue to be called the Nationalist Party or the Malta Labour Party when Gonzi’s Party and Sant’s Party would be more appropriate. Unless you had not noticed, the parties follow the same pattern: they stay focused on their leadership but not on the leadership of the country.
A wise leader is a leader who manages to stay focused on everything: on his leadership, on the party and on the country. A leader who chooses to focus only on his leadership does not deserve to be the party leader. He is there for his own ambition and not for the ambition of the party that one day will be in government. He is a leader who is lazy and who wants to concentrate only within the confines of his territory that is the party headquarters because that is where he feels most secure. His insecurity does not let him thread outside the confines of the party headquarters. He is secure within the party headquarters because his energy has to be focused only on winning the hearts of the party delegates because they are the ones who make him and the ones who break him.
Most of the delegates vote with their feelings and out of sincere love for the party, and the best way to play around with their feelings is to play the victim: delegates will never allow their leader to be a victim, not even of the same party officials. It is always wise for every party leader to play the victim and expose their victimisation to the delegates, because in that way that leader is securing an extension of his leadership.
Staying focused is a priority for any party leader and keeping delegates focused on the leader is even a harder priority to conserve. This can be done by making sure the delegates know that, although you are doing your very best within the party to take them to victory in the next general elections, there are people within the party who are not.
The media can be the best or the worst ally of any party leader. There are leaders who use it to the benefit of the party and others who use it to the benefit of their leadership. If we take the example of the Dubai affair which the Nationalist media explained so intelligently (and I augur that Labour will allow the head of One News to follow suit), Bondiplus was the catalyst to spark it all. Sant says that he has a she-serpent within the party who informed the Nationalist media about the meeting of the contractors with the party’s lawyer in Hamrun. He may be right, but the bigger serpent is he or she who provided Bondiplus with the details about the visit in Dubai and if the rumours on the person who did this are correct, then that will be the highest act of treason.
Either by an act of faith or intentionally, I feel that there is a move within the Malta Labour Party to discredit the deputy leaders. Together with the secretary-general they were elected by delegates to bring the party in shape, but instead ended up having to wag their leader’s tail to survive in the party administration. The Dubai visit was another blow to deputy leader Notary Charles Mangion, who has now been discredited by most of the party delegates. I will not be surprised if the other deputy leader meets the same faith. The latter has still not been tarnished by any scandal or rumour that could shake Sant’s leadership, and I repeat – I will not be surprised if in the near future, before the general elections, efforts will be made to discredit him.
Undoubtedly the victorious and stronger person in all this is the party leader, who can have a field day with the delegates convincing them that with spies, or the serpent within the party, he won’t be to blame if Labour loses the general elections. During TV programme Doksa, the secretary-general of the Malta Labour Party said Sant will go again before the party delegates asking for a vote of confidence if he loses the general elections. That means that there will be no Malta Labour Party anymore but Alfred Sant’s party – the Labour I know is not the Labour they have made it to be. Sant does not want to report the serpent to the party’s vigilance and discipline board but to the delegates at the party’s general conference in January 2007. We wait and see if he keeps his word. It will be interesting to see if the name he divulges will be one of ‘his clique’, or in any one of the deputy leaders’ cliques. We wait and see, but whatever it will be, it will be a very unwise move especially as it will coincide with election fever.
The Nationalist media should get all excited about this because the John Dalli case is a replica, albeit with subtlety and wisdom. In that case Gonzi received a confidential report, a report he made out to be the gospel truth, and on that report Dalli was discredited. Although there are people who say Dalli was not mentioned in that report, I am not going to get into the merits of this. What I know is that at that time all the business interests of Dalli’s family started being thrown about by the Labour media (just as Dubai was sparked off by Bondiplus) until he was demoted to the bankbench. If the ministers at present have any of their children in businesses synonymous with their fathers’ ministerial portfolio, I don’t know because we do not hear anything in the media.
The power struggle within the political parties is evident in the exposure they give to their delegates, MPs and candidates in their media. I cannot understand how Labour imposes a ban on all its MPs and candidates but not on the other MP, Dr George Vella, who has a weekly radio programme with Manwel Cuschieri. I cannot understand how both political parties allow their people to buy airtime on Smash TV so that they can make their appearance felt on television. How low can these political parties go when they allow politics to render itself into a Vanna Marchi show when the candidates and MPs who have money can have a voice, and those who don’t cannot air their views equally?
This is to show you the poor state of politics in Malta where leaders have stayed focused on their leadership and not on the leadership of the party and of their country; where our politicians are being discriminated by their own party and finding solace in buying airtime on Smash TV to make their voice heard; where party delegates have been rendered into just a rubber stamp; where the time will come when a revolution will take place in this country which will revive once again politics in Malta.
Until then, all we have to do is give them the rope and at the same time pity their genuine supporters who still believe that we still do politics the old way!
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