Eyes on the protest vote in MLP leadership contest

What follow are a few helpful words for two groups of people among the faithful parishioners of this column - the gamblers and the psychiatrists of Nationalist Party voters. I reckon both have an intense professional interest in the Labour Party leadership contest that takes place tonight.

Predictions from within the MLP headquarters give the two challengers just under 200 votes between them. That is 200 out of a total of some 900 votes - 22 per cent.

For those who would like to see the political end of Alfred Sant, the most optimistic prediction comes from the camp of one of the challengers. It gives the two challengers over 500 votes between them. This prediction reckons that Dr Sant will not make the required 50 per cent + one vote threshold, at least in the first round of voting.

My tip for the gamblers: Dr Sant will make it in the first round. The real issue is whether he will reach the 75 per cent threshold he appears to have set himself. If the challengers get 250 votes between them - almost 30 per cent - the damage done to his authority will be proportionately far greater than the few percentile points might initially suggest.

I have two reasons for thinking that the most optimistic anti-Sant prediction is over-excited. My hunch is that it is based on a series of telephone calls to delegates made by a relative of one of the challengers - which suggests that the shows of support were extracted by political dentistry.

More casual conversations with delegates tend to reveal that a great weight is attached to showing "loyalty" to Dr Sant, or giving him "another chance". The sentiment of loyalty is held even by delegates who appear to believe that Dr Sant will lose, again, in 2008.

The Labourite activist's conception of the party leader as il-mexxej (as distinct from the PN kap) perhaps has something to do with this kind of loyalty that is prepared to follow the leader even into another defeat. A kap is an organically connected head of a party. A mexxej is a leader one follows into the sunset.

Hence my tip to the psychiatrists of PN voters: if you are about to take a holiday, postpone it. Upon Dr Sant's re-election as leader, your clients are likely to go delirious. They will streak naked in the streets, shouting: "Eureka! There is a god and he votes PN!" Or at any rate, they will phone their favourite Radio 101/Net TV programme and talk as though they are about to do just that.

It is not true that Dr Sant is unelectable. The problem with him, from an MLP viewpoint, is that he can only win the next election under certain conditions.

If the economy has not picked up, if the definite overall benefits of EU membership do not come to Malta in a way that fits with the political cycle, then Dr Sant probably wins. But then so would almost any MLP leader.

However, if the economy does pick up, then Dr Sant will be put on the defensive even though he is in opposition. Thrown at his face will be the number of false predictions he made concerning EU membership - including the fact that the party that takes us into the EU will be out of power for a generation, so bad are the overall consequences.

It seems unnecessary for the leader of an opposition facing a party that would have been in government for 19 years by 2008 to have to hope that the country's economy does not become vigorous.

What a contrast with other potential leaders of the MLP. Given the right signals, the voters might well trust them even with an economic boom that the PN government would have helped stimulate. If voters feel that the MLP can safeguard a boom, then they probably would vote the PN out of office simply on the grounds that it has been in power for too long.

No doubt, many delegates are aware of this. It will be interesting to see just how many of them translate their awareness into a protest vote tonight.

ranierfsadni@europe.com