Labour decides to release election defeat report

The Labour Party's national executive decided last night to publish the report analysing the March 8 election defeat, a surprise move that may have implications on the upcoming leadership race.

The document will be published officially on Monday evening, giving the members of the national executive time to go through it and eventually discuss it in another meeting that has been called for Saturday morning.

Should the meeting not be concluded on Saturday, the discussion will continue on Monday evening and then the entire 80-page report will be posted on the party's website. A hard copy will in the meantime be given to the party's delegates.

The decision was announced in a statement issued shortly after the national executive meeting, which ended at about 9.30 p.m. Commissioned shortly after the general election, the report was passed on to the party's acting leader, Charles Mangion, early last week and was then distributed to just a handful of people within the party administration.

Party sources present at the meeting said it appeared from the start that there was broad consensus that the document should be made public, particularly as the date for the leadership election had been put back to give the party enough time to digest and analyse its third general electoral defeat in a row.

A few argued against the publication of the document on the basis that "the party's agenda was being dictated by outsiders".

Those favouring the release of the study were split between those who said it should be published as a matter of principle and others who concluded that publishing it officially would be less damaging than having it leaked.

Eventually, the decision was unanimous. The report's findings may have an impact on the leadership race for a number of reasons, not least because a member of the administration, Michael Falzon, is running for Labour's top job. Whether the report exonerates Dr Falzon but more so if it criticises his role in any way, the document is likely, one way or another, to affect his bid.

Earlier this week Dr Falzon distanced himself from a key plank of the party's electoral campaign when he said on the Smash TV programme Realtà that he had warned the party that one of the billboards used during the final stages of the electoral campaign - the one with the word "corruption" on it and featuring photographs of the Prime Minister, nine ministers and two parliamentary secretaries - was libellous.

A day before that programme, fellow leadership hopeful George Abela said that the new leader should have no connection with the March 8 defeat. Maltatoday reported on Sunday that the report is believed to be critical of the involvement of one of Joseph Muscat's assistants in the party campaign. However, the latter denied it flatly in an interview published in the sister paper Illum.

Back in 2003, a similar report had not been published but the national executive had been given the opportunity to go through it at the headquarters while not actually receiving a copy of the document.

A study analysing the PN's bad showing at the 2004 Euro-parliamentary elections was at the centre of an embarrassing leak to l-Orizzont, which serialised it in 2006 for maximum effect.