The report analysing Labour's defeat last March is said to have been concluded and handed over to MLP acting leader Charles Mangion. Rumour has it that the report takes to task a number of people in the party administration, including a personal assistant of leadership contender Joseph Muscat.
Meanwhile Michael Falzon and Marie Louise Coleiro-Preca, two of the MLP's five leadership contenders, keep on meeting people in various open-air markets to hear first-hand what the ordinary folk think about the MLP's future. Evarist Bartolo insists that it was not the media that brought about the MLP's third successive downfall while George Abela apologises for the excesses of some Labour spokesmen during the election campaign, stressing that one should attack arguments not people.
Muscat, considered by many as the anointed one, keeps on pushing his business plan that - he insists - should work wonders by transforming the MLP into a vehicle for a winning generation of Labourites.
It was against this background that the former MLP leader, who is inexplicably still Leader of the Opposition, spoke in Parliament on Monday at the first opportunity in the House since the election. His speech came as a surprise to many who had mistakenly believed that he had bowed out gracefully and irrevocably. An unrepentant Sant explained that his party's electoral defeat did not lie at his door: his policies were just what Malta needed and he regrets nothing at all.
This attitude is in line with his reactions to the three electoral defeats that the MLP suffered under his leadership. In 1998 he claimed the people had elected an illegitimate government. In 2003 he insisted he won the EU membership referendum only to 'mysteriously' lose the election held after five weeks of his 'victory'. This time it was a combination of forces that thwarted his valiant attempts at democratising Malta.
He was never wrong because he knows it all. Suddenly I find myself in complete agreement with those who have always maintained that Sant is an intellectual snob.
All those who thought that Sant's speech in Parliament last Monday would be his last hooray realised they were completely wrong and many were flabbergasted by the sheer effrontery of his speech.
The heading of the report on Sant's speech in The Times last Tuesday - 'Opposition leader sees new threat to democracy' -to many might have been shocking or simply bemusing. For people who have just a passing knowledge of our political history, the real threat to democracy was the autocratic rule of Labour's years in government under Dom Mintoff between 1971 and 1987. Today, many might strongly disagree with what the government is doing or not doing, but there is no perceived threat to democracy.
Sant sees it differently. According to him a threat emanates from a web spun by a clique of interests that has the power to take decisions to favour the few - hence the lack of 'democracy'. He even warned that these people would try to take over the Labour Party and colonise it... but the internal strength of the MLP and its commitment to 'real democracy' would ensure that it would never play servant to a few interests.
This 'introspection' seems to be a reflection of the internal party struggle that will lead to the MLP choosing his successor. It is double-speak for: George Abela will not be allowed to make it and I will ensure that Joseph Muscat does.
It all depends on what one means by 'democracy', of course. Sant's definition of 'real democracy' is practically one in Marxist terms. It recalls - or reflects - the ideas of Nicos Poulantzas, the Greek neo-Marxist theorist who originated the concept of the 'relative autonomy' of the capitalist state and who eventually became a proponent of euro-communism. Poulantzas argued that the state functions to ensure the smooth operation of a capitalist society, and therefore benefits the capitalist class.
Looking at Sant's latest public stance in these terms is a revelation. Suddenly all past talk of 'barons' and 'friends of friends' no longer look like being simple popular catchwords thrown in as part of the strategy of the 'politics of envy'. They make sense in a more ominous way. 'New Labour' never really existed, after all.
Even his opposition to EU membership can be interpreted as falling in line with this ideological stance - while all the time everybody thought that EU membership was no contradiction to what the MLP believed in as a modern European democratic socialist party. Was Sant's opposition to EU membership solely inspired by the particular circumstances of Malta - as he always implied - or was there something deeper lurking in his mind?
All this makes one wonder how history will judge Sant. Some say he will be just a foot-note like so many would-be leaders that never made it for varying reasons.
Most probably, he who knows it all believes that history's judgment will be in his favour. He believes his 'revolution' cannot die and must survive.
Nothing else fits in his long term well-thought out managerial plan for Malta. So that must be it.
micfal@maltanet.net