Blunders and good intentions

So Alfred Sant has made a comeback. When we least expected to hear from him, the former Labour leader wrote an epistle (January 6) spreading over two pages. In it he tackled the cause of Labour’s 2008 electoral defeat. The reasons he gave vary, but basically in his version he blamed everybody but himself. His article is a shining example of the “no regrets” syndrome suffered by the former Labour leader. On constant attack, he flung unsubstantiated allegations left, right and centre and accused his unscrupulous and “permissive” victorious rivals of lying, promising heaven on earth, handing out “illegal” favours and contracts, buying of votes etc.

Seemingly oblivious to the fact that the electorate judges a political party on its credibility and policies, the author labelled a large chunk of the Maltese “influential” community a network of power and criticised The Sunday Times and other birds of the same feather for taking sides and “weakening Labour”.

As expected, in his bombardment, Dr Sant did not find any fault with his opponents’ policies. Call me naïve, but perhaps he has still not understood that political issues play a vital part in any electoral campaign and, during the last electoral campaign the proposals put forward by Labour were plainly bad. Just to mention one: the outrageous reception class proposal.

The electorate is not foolish. It is said that one must look to the past to divine the future. Well, Labour’s track record under Dr Sant’s premiership was a disaster. In spite of possibly having the best of intentions, Labour’s faulty judgment, sealed by its ludicrous actions, was the cause of its downfall. Its proposals to devaluate the lira, its stubborn anti-EU stance and its relentless phobia towards the euro cost it dearly.

As did its endorsement of the status quo: no to pluralism, no to privatisation, no to liberalisation, no to VAT but yes to devaluing the lira, yes to the partnership and yes to the Switzerland in the Mediterranean fairytale.

Dr Sant’s article offers much food for thought. What really caught my attention was his harsh criticism of the lengthy post-elections report commissioned by the Labour Party (PL) executive following its fourth major defeat at the polls (EU referendum included).

According to Dr Sant the experts missed the wood for the trees. To quote his words borrowed from timesofmalta.com: “It has too many mistakes of fact and appreciation to offer us a guiding light.

“It seems that those who wrote it have little clear knowledge of the personal and organisational environment of a political party. Therefore, the report gives major importance to trivial matters while what was really problematic in the Labour campaign hardly gets a mention”.

To be fair he does concede the point that the rapporteurs had the best of intentions when their conclusions were drawn up.

The after-taste of that 99-page long report was indeed a bitter one as the findings were extremely negative on all fronts. Unfortunately, for some strange reason, the report has recently been removed from the Labour’s website but, in a nutshell, according to the specialists all seems to have gone wrong with Labour: its policies, its media, its credibility, its campaign, its internal piques, its communications or lack thereof, its overconfidence etc.

Yet, according to Dr Sant only “trivial” matters were investigated. So I ask: What was most problematic in the Labour campaign? What on earth could have gone much worse than the disaster described in the report’s conclusions?

Before proceeding to give his view of Malta’s future, or rather the PL’s vision for the future – but that is another story – Dr Sant wrote that the PN victory was no landslide. He suggests that the Nationalist Administration does not have the licence to act as though it had a strong mandate. Excuse me, but even if the PL was defeated “by the slimmest of margins” it only gained the right to sit on the opposition benches and it unequivocally lost any privilege to govern.

That is what the people decided. But all is not yet lost. Labour too can contribute towards Malta’s welfare. It would do well to keep in mind that today, more than ever, in order to face up to the international economic hurricane threatening to hit our shores, it is crucial that Malta’s interest be placed before any of its petty partisan concerns and “alleged” internal squabbles.

Wishing you all a great 2009.