Three men in a balcony

The picture of Alfred Sant and his two deputies waving to the crowd from the red balcony of the Hamrun MLP club symbolising a united Labour front was, perhaps, the most important message emanating from last Sunday's mass protest against the current PN administration that garnered the support of the majority of the electorate only ten months ago.

Dr Sant's rallying cry in which he listed all those people with whom the MLP wants to express its solidarity - the unemployed, the self-employed, students and pensioners - and which was purportedly made in support of the imperative need for the MLP to keep on raising awareness of these people's plight, will not serve them or the country any good. Yet Dr Sant's move is really a very clever ploy.

For, whatever reasons Dr Sant gives to justify his decision to take Labour supporters to the streets, I believe that the real motivation was his urgent need to unite the party. As everyone knows, there is no better way to rally one's troops and induce them to forget all the differences between them than to get them to focus their attention on the common enemy!

In other words, to bury the crisis within the MLP, Dr Sant had to sell the idea that there is a gargantuan crisis in the country and hence the need for all Labour activists and supporters to unite in their "struggle in favour of the worker", even though this is just a figment of their imagination. The message last Sunday was simply empty rhetoric to boost this exercise. In this, Dr Sant was very ably assisted by the two deputy leaders, Charles Mangion and Michael Falzon, whose speeches reflected the same line of thought.

Suddenly the intricate and clever manoeuvres within the internal structure of the MLP that my namesake is continually being credited with, the bickering on the MLP's candidates for the elections of the European Parliament next June and KMB's threat to split the party, have disappeared into thin air.

The real beneficiary of the MLP's present tactics and antics is, therefore, Dr Sant's hold on the MLP. It is his leadership that is being reinforced and his strategy is slowly but surely leading to the restoration of his ironclad rule that was prevalent before the 2003 referendum and election fiascos when Dr Sant had two very different deputy leaders abetting him at the helm of the party.

I cannot but admire Dr Sant's clever use of the very two men who were said to make a difference on the way the party was going to be run, in order to ensure that he would keep running it in the same old way - the only way he knows how to do the job. This is the sort of strategic nous in which the Labour leader excels.

Dr Sant's brief interview on the PBS programme Reporter last Wednesday was an opportunity for him to keep on the same tack. This time he even gilded the lily by insisting that before the government can expect all the social and political forces to unite in a common front and devise a plan for economic and social regeneration, it must first acknowledge that the country is facing a crisis.

Incredibly, this time it was Dr Sant playing psychiatrist enticing his 'patient' to get out of a state of denial - except that the truth is the other way round. It is Dr Sant who is in a state of denial: denying that the MLP is in a mess and that his 12-year leadership has rendered it unelectable! Of course, his penchant for turning arguments and facts on their heads knows no bounds.

In the long run, however, although Dr Sant's tactics will ensure that he remains MLP leader with all the clout associated with the post, they will only be sweeping the party's problems under the carpet and not solving them. For they cannot be really solved so long as he keeps leading the MLP.

The sad truth is that what is good for Dr Sant is not necessarily good for the MLP and as a result Malta's party in Opposition representing almost 48 per cent of the electorate remains in disarray. At the very point when Malta actually joins the European Union, its attitude on this historic step is condemned to remain ambivalent so long as Dr Sant is at its helm for, with him as leader, the MLP cannot shake off the baggage of the recent past.

The image of the three men in the balcony last Sunday has only served to continue to cover up - even if only temporarily - this reality. And the two men at Dr Sant's flanks have ended up, perhaps unwittingly, contributing to this charade.

Fiction has never had it so good.