Big change ahead for MLP

The Malta Labour Party is to have a new general secretary. Jimmy Magro, who has been in the job for 12 years, has decided that he will not be contesting the post again and is going to contest the European Parliament elections.

The MLP is still embroiled in the inevitable soul-searching after yet another defeat at the last general election. The party was, and is, in no doubt that changes had, and still have, to be made.

Although many outside the party, and for a little while the man himself, felt that the obvious change was to have a new leader, the MLP decided that Alfred Sant was not the liability seen by some, and that he was capable of leading the party to an eventual victory.

Instead, it booted out George Vella and Joe Brincat and elected two new deputies, Charles Mangion and Michael Falzon.

Besides, despite the dirty laundry airing in the latest, and probably final Alfred Mifsud episode, the MLP have learnt a few lessons and there are, no doubt, changes being made within the party that have not yet reached the media.

But one major change has, and one wonders whether the timing of Mr Magro's decision to give a press conference on his eventual departure from the general secretary's seat to a possible European parliamentary one, was to deflect attention away from Alfred Mifsud.

The latter has just left the MLP after the party's Vigilance Board issued him with a warning "to stop damaging the party" by his articles in the press.

The obvious question to Mr Magro after he announced his intentions to try his luck in Strasbourg, was whether he had been, after all, a closet Europhile?

"Certainly not", he said, adding that the Malta Labour Party accepted the electorate's vote to join Europe. He still believes that partnership would have been the better option, but he had to accept "the reality" and the MLP is now working to ensure that once in Europe the Maltese are represented well in the European Parliament.

Mr Magro feels that he will be in a better position to safeguard Maltese interests in the European Parliament.

I also asked him whether the failure of the MLP to get back into power had influenced his decision. Mr Magro said that his decision was a personal one. He felt that he had been in the post for long enough and had served his party well, but it was now time to move on.

Yet, he was quoted in Il-Gens yesterday, as saying that the time has come for him to look forward to a more positive experience than he is experiencing now. And in The Times that the most positive experience he had as general secretary was when the MLP won the election in 1996, and his biggest disappointment came when "there where those who did not let the party enjoy the fruits of that win".

He was bashful about whom he would like to see as his successor and refused to be drawn into naming names. He said that the MLP delegates would have to choose.

He was just as tight-lipped when I asked for his views on the MLP Vigilance Board's attempt to muzzle Alfred Mifsud while tolerating Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici's outbursts that the MLP were abandoning their principles.