As was expected by early Sunday afternoon, the result of the EU referendum was known. This indicated a clear yes majority. In all democratic countries there would have been swift concession by the losing side (perhaps accompanied by an attempt to put a brave face on it), a few self-congratulatory words by the winners (perhaps accompanied by some public celebrations) and that would be that. The country is allowed to move on. No attempt to throw it into a state of uncertainty is made by the losers so as to protect their own political position. Not in Malta. At least not as long as Alfred Sant remains leader of the MLP.

On Sunday, as soon as it was amply clear that the electorate had opted for EU membership, Dr Sant put on his trade mark mirthless, fixed smirk, switched to the prepared contingency plan and proceeded to insult the nation's intelligence by interpreting defeat as victory. Had he stopped there, most of us would have probably shrugged, exclaimed: What can you expect from this man? And dismissed him from our minds. But Dr Sant went further.

In a totally irresponsible manner he called the party faithful to celebrate, heedless of the incident-prone situation that would cause and of the uncertainty and instability he was sowing in the country. His one concern was to save his political skin.

The MLP leader's strategy to claim victory as soon as he lost was predictable from the moment he decreed that those against EU membership should either boycott the referendum, spoil their vote or vote no. The intention was to subtract the yes votes from the total number of persons appearing on the electoral register in order to inflate the no vote.

It was equally obvious that Dr Sant needed to pre-empt the publication of clear results in order to unleash his supporters and focus attention solely on his twisted arithmetic. Standing on his pseudo-moral soap box he lectured us in the name of democracy.

Let me jog Dr Sant's memory seeing that he found my comments on PBS "obscene".

His own deputy party leader for parliamentary affairs, George Vella, who apparently did not quite have the stomach for this prepared blatant charade, told Crossroads when interviewed: "Personally that's how I see it. If one wants to prove to me that the majority of people are in favour of EU membership, I would expect to see 50 per cent + 1 of all eligible voters voting yes - with the exclusion of that very small percentage who never vote". (The Sunday Times, February 23).

Let us now apply Dr Vella's test, however faulty it may be, to the EU referendum result.

Number of voters 297,881 less 5% average of non-voters 14,894 remaining 95% of voters 282,887 yes votes 143,094 % of remaining 95% 50.58

The above illustrates unmistakably that even with the inclusion of those people who have died since the publication of the register in September, of those who were too ill to vote, who were abroad and did not come to vote, those who were unable to vote through legal action, and of those who for some reason or other could not make it to the polls, the yes vote still obtained a majority. However, since even the application of Dr Sant's own deputy's criteria does not provide the result that he craves, he ignores it.

Rather than bow his head to the will of the majority, he prefers to make a laughing stock of Malta and the Maltese in front of the visiting international media who know that in a referendum what always counts is the number of valid votes cast. If yes votes are in a majority then the referendum result is considered a positive one, and vice versa. This is the accepted democratic way of interpreting a referendum result. But Dr Sant, "the quintessential European", as Mario Vella (The Times, February 25), sycophantically described him, has his own self-serving yardstick. By applying it, an unpalatable majority of 19,466 votes is transformed into a decided minority.

Dr Sant stands revealed like never before for what he is: a poseur democrat who struts the political stage mouthing platitudes about democracy and transparency but who only respects both, as long as it is to his political advantage to do so.

In reality his mask was torn following the 1998 election result. We all remember the briefly prime minister's reactions to his self-inflicted electoral defeat. He announced he had nothing to apologise for. This was quickly followed by the equally unforgettable assertion that the newly elected government, with a majority of 13,000 votes, was "illegitimate". To which he added for good measure that so far as he was concerned there was "no way" he would seek consensus.

On Sunday afternoon, rather than shoulder the responsibility of facing his supporters and admitting defeat, he tries to prevent them from realising they were about to be led into the imminent election campaign by a loser, by fooling them into celebrating a non-existent victory. He then donned the mantle of the leader of a superpower and warned the EU, with whom he was already celebrating a "partnership", as to its future behaviour. Further proof that so far as Dr Sant is concerned, anything will do as long as he clings to the party leadership, playing for time in the hope that something will turn up to save him from oblivion.

No doubt Dr Sant will react yet again to the above by attacking me, rather than my arguments. It is absolutely all the same to me. I know I am voicing the thoughts of all fair-minded persons in this country who are fed up of Dr Sant's warped and self-serving interpretations; of his public displays of victim syndrome; of his political tantrums; and, above all, of his mind games and manipulations.

Prof. Pirotta is head of the department of international relations at the University of Malta