Michael Falzon, one of the five contenders for the MLP's top post on June 5, yesterday hit out at the party's electoral defeat report saying it unfairly blamed some people, reduced the blame on others, was not true in certain instances and attempted to hide the truth.
Addressing a news conference, a visibly hurt and angry Dr Falzon pointed out that the husband of one of the electoral commission's members regularly wrote against him in several blogs. This member, he said, had been extremely aggressive towards him when he was interviewed.
He refused to name this person saying he was not holding the news conference to attack anyone but in the interest of the party.
He also refused to name officials who, he claimed, were abusing their position within the party and leaking information including the agenda of the party's executive meeting before this was even given to members of the executive.
Dr Falzon warned that although as party leader he would be willing to work with anyone elected by the delegates, as long as they safeguarded the interests of the party, he was not prepared to work with people who leaked information.
He pointed out that although the party was meant to discuss the report last Saturday, once the executive decided that it could be made public, the haste seemed to have disappeared and the discussion was postponed to September.
The report, he said, was published before the party had taken any decisions on it. If it was anyone's intention to put him in bad light, anyone could see where his loyalty lies.
He described as "insolent" a section of the report which accused the party of being lost at the counting hall on election day. The report, he said, could have pointed out that he had stayed on at the counting hall together with the head of the party's electoral office Louis Gatt and party president Stefan Zrinzo Azzopardi.
He knew the election result by 12.45 p.m. on Sunday but spent until 6 p.m. hoping the system he had created to calculate the result was wrong. It was not.
The report also noted that there were people within the leadership who were too convinced the party would win the election.
"Who?" Dr Falzon asked, pointing out that during the party's last mass meeting before the election, he had appealed to Labourites to vote.
Rather than working on his own personal campaign, he had spent voting day pushing people to vote. "I was always there for the party, even at the counting hall."
While the analysis criticised the party for being too negative, it failed to say who had been negative.
On the decision to extend the voting time by an hour, which the report says was taken by Dr Falzon without consultation, he said he could not have consulted anyone on a decision which had already been taken "by others". The Labour Party did not have a vote in the Electoral Commission and he had not been asked for his opinion.
He noted that when speaking about the extension, the report ended with an incomplete sentence: "While that the extra hour had not resulted in any additional votes for the MLP in Żejtun..."
"When was the sentence edited? How did it continue? Was the whole report edited?" he asked.
On the report's reference to cliques, he said he would never be part of them and it was only those who were not sure of themselves who needed such cliques.
He apologised to delegates and activists who, he said, had been criticised in the report so that he would be attacked. "These people deserve much better."