Minding the store

Who cares about Nationalist MP Jeffrey Pullicino Orland's juggling with the truth? Who cares who becomes leader of the MLP? Whose store is it, anyway? According to the Prime Minister and Nationalist leader Lawrence Gonzi the Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando affair is an internal PN matter. According to a wide swathe in the MLP the question of who takes over the reins of the party is of concern to Labour alone. On both counts, the reality is slightly different.

Nobody has the right to tell the PN what to do about Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando on the basis of conclusions one can already reach given what he said and did not say and what Dr Gonzi told Reno Bugeja on Dissett. Irrespective of what the police report will hold when it eventually comes out, Dr Gonzi has provided public evidence that his MP was not open-handed with the facts. He was not as transparent as a child's innocence towards the voters and the public, never mind his own leader. The Pullicino Orland affair was an affair to remember. It cannot be forgotten, even if the PN, for political reasons, now decide to sweep its white-washed parts under a dirty carpet.

Joe Saliba, the exiting PN general secretary, has already given shocking confirmation that the party's primary objective was not to let the affair damage the PN's chances of winning the general election. The man's cynical view of politics shocked one reader of The Times, who wrote a letter to the editor asking what about probity in public affairs. No one else seemed to mind, suggesting that Malta's political soul enjoys hibernating. But the facts of the affair, hidden, shoved under the carpet or not, remain what they are. No amount of cynical closing of ranks will make them any less distasteful.

As for the new leader of the MLP, of course it is the party which is tasked to elect him, whether by its delegates or a wider constituency of paid-up members. But the person elected will not only lead the Labour Party and be the alternative Prime Minister. To win the next general election s/he will have to penetrate into non-traditional Labour catchments. Otherwise Labour will probably be destined to lose the next general election as well.

Already, practically a whole generation does not know that Labour can be a party of government. Thousands more coming of age between now and the next general election will join it.

It is in the interest of the MLP to be able to assess what floaters and the young expect of a modern social democratic Labour Party in order to consider voting for it.

If those who select the new leader wear blinkers to public opinion, as the party's Vigilance and Discipline Board initially wanted them to, they would not be able to vote with winnable contender or contenders foremost in their minds.

The delegates and the party machinery are perfectly entitled to become a cocoon of detachment from reality. But will it be in the interest of the party and, ultimately, of the country, to do so? Watch out for Nationalist tricks - yes. But watch out for internal tricks too. The PN bosses may understandably seek to limit the damage of the Pullicino Orland affair.

But if in doing so they devalue the meaning of service to the public good. which should motivate all parliamentarians, they harm the country and not just their party.

The parties may hold the key to the stores they run. But those stores are built on public land.