Incarnated superficiality

In last Monday's interview with The Times, Jason Micallef, secretary-general of the Labour Party, unconsciously succeeded in reinforcing his party's and his leader's present image with the electorate. The party leadership and its core followers are intent only on winning the next election. Alfred Sant wants to hang on until he succeeds in erasing the blunder he committed in 1998.

Now it is true that political parties exist to win elections. But winning elections is only a means to an end not the end. The true raison d'être of a political party is to propagate its views of how society should be organised politically, economically and socially. It has to influence the minds of men and women. It can succeed even without attaining power if it influences the policies of other parties.

A party has the duty to update its policies to fit the times; it has to devise strategy and tactics according to the situation but the moment it starts messing about with its principles it asks for trouble. Many supporters begin to feel uneasy and question their place in the party and the thinking core starts contesting the leadership. In essence this was what happened when the short-lived Labour government blew sky-high the electricity and water rates in 1997.

In spite of Dom Mintoff's past cardinal sins, his accusation that the MLP had lost its soul stuck and how. Consciously or unconsciously his call is now being taken up by the very young in the party.

In my view the true cause of Labour's ills is the loss of its ideological bearings. It was Dr Sant who threw the political compass overboard. No one is sure what the MLP today stands for. The facts that Dr Sant has weak leadership qualities, that the process of his election to the leadership was tainted, that he resigns one day only to contest on the morrow, do not help but are not the essence of the problem.

The leadership tries to mask the real problem by claiming that the root of Labour's discomfiture originated in high treason from within and by accusing the Nationalist Party that it has succeeded in demonising Dr Sant. Dr Sant does not need anybody to demonise him.

The situation has deteriorated to such an extent that while asserting that the aim of all true Labourites is to win the next election, his close aides themselves are really toiling at propping the leader. They know their task is desperate because the enemy is not outside the ramparts as they frequently claim but is within the party, in its very structures. Their only weapon is to repeat ad nauseam that their only hope of winning the next election is for all to unite. They hope that every day that passes by will make the internal opposition's task to replace Dr Sant impossible before the next election. They hope that if the MLP as now led cannot win on its own merits it will win by default. This would save Dr Sant and themselves. However, the various internal opposition groups are not convinced that Dr Sant will lead them to victory or that under him the party will regain its lost soul. No whistling in the dark or clarion calls will do the trick. Every week something interesting breaks out from the Labour camp.

Nor will the superficial reading of the situation by the secretary-general in the media help. If anything became evident from the interview it is Labour's superficiality. I am not referring to the fact that Mr Micallef does not have a clue of which structures decide policy in our party. We smile at his naïvety but the people will not notice.

The secretary-general admits that Dr Sant has no charisma but he claims this is only apparent because Dr Sant cracks jokes in private.

As if charisma has anything to do with jokes and pranks. Is this the best that Dr Sant's aides can think of to bolster their leader's image? Will we henceforth have the leader joke in conferences and on television? And hey presto we'll have a charismatic Alfred Sant! Is this the stuff of which Dom Mintoff was made? Is this the way how he mesmerised the crowds? No wonder the ranks feel uneasy.

Mr Micallef passes over again superficially the accusation about Labour's many U-turns by throwing responsibility onto the general conference. Let's, for lack of space, leave aside the EU issue. Was it not Dr Sant alone that had decided to oppose VAT at all costs? He correctly divined that he had a winning card and imposed it on the party, a proposal which was gleefully taken up by the ever accommodating General Workers' Union. It won him the 1996 election and, thus, established his position in the MLP.

But what did it profit the country or even the party in the long-term? We had introduced the tax because we believed it was necessary in an economy that was becoming more services based. We also knew that it was required if we were to be accepted in the EU, the cornerstone of our policies since 1979. But what were the costs of the opposition to VAT for the country? A heavy blow to fiscal morality, so much so that Dr Sant's own, if reluctant, Finance Minister rightly started a campaign to combat the culture of fiscal evasion. There was then the resignation and premature retirement of a capable minister and politician, two years of toying about with a home-grown substitute that nobody, not even its proponents, understood and the loss of millions of liri in government revenue worsening dramatically the government's deficit. The deficit climbed to Lm150 from Lm71 million within two years, a figure which in absolute terms we will come close to only this year. One should note that an improvement in VAT enforcement is contributing in no small way to the lowering of the deficit.

And the secretary-general gleans over these U-turns by saying that "a party would be foolish if it ignores the signs of the times". True! One of our main accusations with regard to the MLP is that it never sees the signs of the times. It is being again true to itself by refusing to come to terms with the necessity to tackle pension reform. This is no vote-winning issue. So better leave it alone, stay on the fence and pounce once the government starts legislating.

Can anyone blame true floating (as against egoistic) voters to conclude that this party is not fit to govern until it buries its politics of convenience?

Dr Deguara is Minister of Health.