The palace revolution

At the start it did not seem likely that the palace revolution that every sane Labourite was hoping for would actually take place. From inside the glass palace, canvassing for the three acolytes of Alfred Sant contesting the deputy leadership, party affairs, Evarist Bartolo, Manwel Cuschieri and Joe Debono Grech seemed to be as strong as it was blatant.

It could not be that Dr Sant, who said he was opting out until the election, did not know what was going on. This was right under his own nose. My enquiries on the first day of voting however turned up a reasonably strong resistance for any advancement by Mr Cuschieri to the second highest post of the MLP.

That was good news. Not per se, but because it meant that this time the delegates were not allowing anyone from inside to railroad them into any predetermined result. It did look however that Mr Bartolo had backing from the delegates and that it was likely he would make it.

Then came the results of the first night. Mr Bartolo was practically trounced by the silent, unobtrusive Michael Falzon who did not seem to be anywhere around delegate preference that Thursday morning. That shows clearly how well Dr Falzon managed his campaign, how expertly he fought and thwarted the odds against him from inside the palace and how correct the delegates were to choose a man who knows his party as intimately as Dr Falzon does. In the second vote the day after Dr Falzon triumphed.

That was not the end of the story. In the challenge for the deputy leadership, parliamentary affairs, the delegates chose Charles Mangion, an affable, experienced parliamentarian, a former Deputy Speaker of the House until pulled out by Dr Sant and a democrat through and through.

Notary Mangion won over Leo Brincat, seen as a Sant favourite who, nonetheless, gave a creditable rendering of himself, and Joe Brincat, perhaps the only candidate for whom reforms did not seem all that important and who is now saying that his failure to make the position is not all that important to him as this is part of the ups and downs of political life.

The fact is that Notary Mangion managed to run riot with all his competition and made it on the first round with a comfortable majority.

Notary Mangion and Dr Falzon said before the elections they want to make the MLP an inclusive party in which anyone with Labour sentiments will find his place.

That is a fine objective but it will not be accomplished before the two manage to perform another more important task. For years, voters have been conditioned by opinion makers to look in a particular way at the MLP as Dr Sant widened the chasm that he himself had created between the independent media and the MLP and as opinion makers continued to scrutinise and to condemn Alfred Sant for his hateful campaigns against them.

Before voters can be enticed to start considering any kind of return to the MLP, the new deputy leaders have difficult bridges to build. They must first reach out to a reluctant and suspicious independent media, vilified by a leader who is still at the helm, and, at best, cautious of any moves coming from that side of the political fence.

The two deputy leaders have a tough job ahead. The MLP is still polluted with people who used the MLP media, the newspaper, Super 1 radio and Super 1 TV to conduct character assassination campaigns against Labour critics.

This literary vengeance goes on till the present day. No opinion maker or opinion leader will want to touch an MLP while well-known, personally-motivated political haters still hang around its neck like an albatross - and that does and should not end with Mr Cuschieri alone.

Nothing will ever change if Mr Cuschieri is offered as the sacrificial boar to appease a distanced and diffident Labour crowd of many thousands (not a handful as told to a recent interviewer by Mario Vella) all clamouring for surgical not cosmetic change.

Now the elections for deputy leaders are over, the chosen ones elected and the pretenders defeated. Now the job awaits the deputy leaders to rid the MLP of those who have been responsible for one defeat after another by alienating Labourites and floating voters by the thousand.

It will not be easy. Many will have to be dragged away scratching and screaming. I hope the two new leaders will have the guts to carry out the task ahead of them no matter what.

If and when that happens, the future can begin to look brighter for the MLP even with Dr Sant still in the saddle. As George Abela rightly said at the time, the re-election of Dr Sant to the leadership of the MLP was just the first round. The second round has just taken place. Well-wishers of the MLP are now awaiting the next and the one after that until the job is completed.

The MLP delegates should also have shown the way to the General Workers' Union where a change at the top is long overdue no matter what conditions have been made to the union by any incumbent. There it seems that the badly organised palace revolution was botched. Time to make a better plan and to try again.