Election defeat report trying to insult MLP delegates - Falzon

Labour leadership hopeful Michael Falzon told delegates at the Vittoriosa Labour Party club yesterday he would be a strong leader and would not abandon them as others had done in the counting hall in Naxxar on March 9.

The slogan Flimkien Lejn is-Suċċess (Together Towards Success), which Dr Falzon is campaigning under, was his starting point, stressing that only together can things be done. He told the delegates they should not be demoralised by the defeat at the Mtarfa local election, which they had lost to the Nationalist Party, but to look ahead and work together.

"We should not make the mistake of fearing change. After three electoral defeats, what we need to relay is a positive message and not a negative one as we portrayed throughout the election".

He promised the delegates that, if elected leader, the first thing he would do would be to give importance to the party's history. To rapturous applause, he said the party had nothing to be ashamed of.

"I do not want to be the head of the party but the leader. I want to lead the party to an election victory".

He said he is a leftist, a Maltese and a European with an environmental dimension.

He was not trying to take the party down the road to the right side of politics and wanted to remain firmly on the left of the political spectrum.

Speaking about European Socialists head Martin Schulz who came to Malta on Friday to endorse Joseph Muscat, who is also running for the leadership post, he said he was not "happy with a foreign politician coming to our country and meddling with or internal leadership race. I was not the only one who was not happy. There were four of us".

In a letter to PES (Party of European Socialists) President Poul Nyrup Rasmussen, Dr Falzon said that together with George Abela, Evarist Bartolo and Marie-Louise Coleiro Preca, he found Dr Muscat's endorsement "deeply offensive, totally irregular, and highly unethical".

Moving on to the report on Labour's electoral defeat, Dr Falzon said it tried to attack the delegates and him. "Whoever wrote the report was not at the counting hall because a lot of delegates were there with me. However, the report is trying to insult the delegates."