A miss is as good as a mile

There are moments in our lives when we just have to admit that we were wrong, when we just have to plainly admit defeat, when we just have to take a good look at ourselves and realise that, notwithstanding all our good intentions, we did not make the correct choices.

In the political sphere, it is more of not being convincing enough, not being constructive enough and not being the alternative the people were seeking. The easiest way out would be to blame it on the electorate for not being understanding but, in reality, it is more of a case of being out of touch with what the people are thinking and what they want. It happened to the Nationalist Party in 1996 and we made amends. It happened to Labour in 1998, 2003 and 2008 and they persist in believing that they were right and everybody else was wrong. This time around, the pill was harder to swallow.

The strategists in the glass house were shouting victory from months before. Allegedly, they were also mentioning astronomical margins of victory. They spoke as if they were going to roll over the PN. They thought that just because they had spent so much time on the opposition benches they were going to get the sympathy of the electorate and win out of pity. It was all contradictory, trying to relay the message that a new Labour government would be a government of all the Maltese, appearing slick on television but then, in the same breath, overloading Malta with libellous billboards, accusing the Nationalist administration of corruption and using all the disparaging adjectives under the sun against the PN and its supporters.

Such behaviour hardly gives the impression of a government that would treat everyone equally. The voters did not buy Labour's gimmicks.

Alfred Sant's speech in Parliament last week, when commenting on the President's address, brought to light the limbo, or, rather, the hell the Socialists are in at the moment.

Here was a leader who is no longer a leader but is still leading, clinching to the seat till the very end, blaming and accusing everyone of every possible wrongdoing; just because he was not elected Prime Minister, even if this was not the first but the third time that he was shunned by the electorate.

Unable to admit that his party lost, he preferred to transmit the message that his party almost won. Almost winning is a nicer way of saying I lost.

Yes, the PN did win marginally, and that should serve as a reminder to the government that there are certain issues to be tackled, but the fact remains that it won.

The same goes for Labour; they lost with a few hundred votes but they still lost and they have to understand this and accept the fact that they are now in opposition and their sole role is to be constructive from the opposition benches and not try and make believe that the few hundreds that tipped the scales stole the election from them.

Labour lost because it was not credible enough. They should clean up their act, just like the Nationalists did in 1996, if they are to have a sporting chance in five years' time.

Memories tend to be quite short when it is convenient. We have been listening to moans of how the government should include the opposition in decision-making because they only lost marginally. Have they forgotten the 1981-1987 period? Then, the PN did not lose with 1,500 votes; it won with 4,142 votes. It was not 1,500 voters who put the PN in opposition in 1981 but the gerrymandering masterminded by the Socialist government led by Dom Mintoff. Was the PN involved in decision-making then? Was the Leader of the Opposition consulted? On the contrary, he was insulted. The whole country was insulted.

It bemuses me to hear Labour talk about inclusion. What about the 2003 referendum? It had to take five long years for some factions of the Socialists to admit defeat. Let me point out that this was not an official admission that the MLP lost the referendum; it was more an admission of convenience from factions that want to distance themselves from the false presumptions that their then (whether he still is or not is debatable) leader tried to make the people believe.

The election of the new Socialist leader is one of the hot topics on the national agenda. What will the end result be? What will we be getting?

Will the new leader be a carbon copy of his predecessor? Will the new leader be new in name and old in his actions? Will we see someone that will really try for once to lead a constructive opposition? Or will we have the same repeat of moaners that cry foul at every word the Prime Minister utters when it is really a matter of sour grapes?

The role of a leader is very simple; a leader has to lead not to follow and I wholeheartedly hope that whoever is elected does not follow the sorry acts, based on false allegations, that have been the trade mark of Labour leaders for so long.

Mr Casa is a Nationalist member of the European Parliament.

david.casa@europarl.europa.eu, www.davidcasa.eu