The fact that Nikita Alamango – a member of the Labour executive – has been caught plagiarising material for her online blog posts, is not that important in the grand scheme of things.

There may be other events which are more worthy of comment than a clueless Labour wannabe scrabbling around online to filch other people’s work in order to hide her lack of inspiration.

That nothwithstanding,Alamango’s “paraphrasing” of an article which had been published previously in the Financial Times, and her reaction to being caught out, reflects badly on her and on the Labour Party.

Alamango’s cut and paste forays may appear to be insignificant, but they are indicative of two very serious problems within the Labour Party.

First, there is its utter hopelessness in communicating in the English language media. The Labour-supporting It-Torċa can hold its own among the other Maltese papers. While showing an obvious pro-Labour slant, it also contains informative and general interest articles andopinion pieces.

Kulħadd is the equivalent of a tabloid. It’s targeted at a different readership and I suppose it is fairly successful in its aim of keeping its readers in a perpetual state of rebellion and annoyance at the ills visited upon by the country by the Nationalistgovernment. These two papers are obviously partisan, but they serve the Labour Party well enough in providing information to those readers who prefer to read in Maltese.

However, when it comes to communicating in English, the Labour Party limps along with its ridiculous Maltastar portal – a strange hybrid of gossip magazine (one of the latest items published was the intriguing ‘Brits wanted to turn Hitler into a woman’) and agit rubbish penned by barely literate leader writers who cannot spell to save their lives.

Now some people may claim that the pathetic Maltastar is not that important, and that the Labour Party can get its message across just as effectively by other means. But their assessment wouldn’t be correct.

By neglecting its English language media, the Labour Party is alienating itself further from the cohort of people who prefer to read or communicate in this language. This cohort may be numerically small but still significant in terms of influence and opinion-forming power.

Maltastar is the Labour Party’s interface with the public. If it is shoddy, riddled with typos and pidgin English, it is not going to do much to enhance the party’s image as a professionally run organisation.

Just as people toss junk mail and poor quality magazines into the trash can, viewers are going to mentally discard the news and opinion pieces published onMaltastar because they are so poorly presented or explained.

The poor quality of the electronic paper reflects the quality of the people compiling it and contributing to it. Readers will have no truck with a political party that can’t even manage to put a remotely readable website. If the Labour Party isn’t up to that, then how is it going to be up to the job of governing the country?

There are more reasons for concern for the Labour Party. We are not yet in a position to assess Joseph Muscat’s policy proposals. Labour exponents argue they have not been made public to date because of the fear that they will be torn to shreds by the PN machine. This reveals a worrying lack of confidence in these proposals and whether they can stand up to public scrutiny, and also a lack of confidence in the ability of the Labour media to counter any attacks.

Considering the sorry state of Labour’s media capabilities, this lack of confidence is justified. Can you imagine puny and badly written Maltastar (or the people who compile it) fending off the full might of the PN media exponents?

Yes, the latter team may be made up by the merchants of spin, but it is well-written and expertly-packaged spin, as opposed to the barely intelligible messages being published in Maltastar.

Going back to Alamango and her reaction to being caught cribbing. Instead of admitting that it was a fair cop and apologising to the readers whose intelligence she had insulted, she shrugged it off. She justified her actions by pointing out that there were other Nationalist politicians who had been caught copying in exams and others who had plagiarised articles. If they had not been dealt with and fired, why should she be treated differently?

That’s the kind of reasoning which will keep Labour on the opposition benches till kingdom come. What Alamango doesn’t seem to understand is that people may be very disgruntled and annoyed with the Nationalist Party, but they do not like change. They have to have some incentive to jolt them out of their apathetic mind set and general fatalism.

That incentive is the opportunity to vote for something better – an improvement on the current mediocre lot. If Labour is simply going to match the Nationalist Party in the mediocrity stakes, then voters will not be bothered to vote and simply stick to the (mediocre) devil they know. If Alamango doesn’t understand this, I’m afraid there is little hope for Labour.

In a recent Maltastar leader it was stated that the PN “can no longer spin itself out of its sheer incompetence and mediocrity”. That may be true. But then neither can Labour. This is one area where the Labour Party should try to be original and stop hoping its deficiencies will be overlooked, just because its political opponents are equally mediocre.

cl.bon@nextgen.net.mt