A party pushed by fear of failure

Ican't help feeling that the recent hysterical outbursts in Parliament and outside by Labour MPs have been the result of a real foreboding about the chances of their electoral success come 2013.

Let's look at the scenario.

The success story of Labour's victory at the last European elections in 2009 has been brushed aside by party functionaries as too unreliable. Although Labour garnered over 54 per cent of the votes cast, the reality was that Labour's votes amounted to 135,917 when, just a few months earlier, their votes in the general election amounted to 141,888. And we do know how the Labour Party marshalled all its troops to ensure a solid Labour turn-out in the EP elections. With this in mind, the article penned by Desmond Zammit Marmarà, entitled Making Labour Electable (May 18), made a lot of sense.

Yes, Labour has come out with a few proposals on several issues but it is being reactionary most of the time. One of the problems is that when Labour pronounces itself on some problem or other it is always hampered by its recent and not-so-recent stances. So when Labour rightly pointed out that the suspension, for whatever reason, of two EU educational programmes was shameful, on hearing the party protesting, the thinking voter argued aloud, or in his proverbial silence, that if Joseph Muscat and the Labour Party had their way back in 2003 over our membership of the EU not only two educational programmes would have been suspended temporarily but no programmes at all would have been available to our students.

Labour's past still haunts it and will continue to do so.

Labour's stance about corruption poses another double-edged sword for Dr Muscat. An effort is being made by Labour to create the same revulsion to institutionalised corruption that was prevalent among the people in the mid-1980s. But then corruption was so real that the police literally got away with murder! Labour is purposely seeing corruption in all that the government does in order to increase the perception of corruption. If Labour is serious about corruption it can act now. Such point was mentioned in a brilliant article by Austin Bencini entitled The War Against Corruption (May 19). Why wait for at least another three years to wage a proper war against corruption?

The government has never shied away from debating motions put forward by the opposition. And this business of the Labour leader claiming that he has more evidence but refrains from taking it to the competent authorities is reducing his fight against corruption into a phoney war.

And a phoney war it is. After all, the PL under Dr Muscat's leadership is still holding on to properties that belong to the state and to private individuals, depriving the taxpayer and individual citizens from using these assets as they wish.

Corruption has many faces. And Dr Muscat's insistence last summer that the re-taking of a public property in Siġġiewi by the local council from the PL was an act of vengeance against Labour showed clearly how hypocritical the party is when it comes to social justice and corruption itself.

Labour has been and is still being subsidised by you and me. And, to add insult to injury, some of its clubs are being used for commercial purposes. So while the corruption slayer is content to carry on allowing his political party benefitting from the ill-gotten gains made during the years of a government when corruption was institutionalised, at the same time he leads the charge against corruption.

If Dr Muscat and the PL want to be taken seriously about good governance they must first put their house in order. It is their failure to do so that may yet herald more electoral failures.

And Labour knows it. Hence, the silly behaviour borne out of frustration that we have witnessed in Parliament.