It's the day of reckoning for the five people who want to take up the reins at the Malta Labour Party, a job which can probably be described with the same words as those used by Darrin Zammit Lupi on his Facebook entry recently. You'll have to look it up and hope he hasn't changed it in the meantime, since my application of it to this context is hardly up to the standard of Wilde or Coward.
On Thursday, the delegates to the National Conference of the MLP will be asked to choose who is to fill the shoes of Alfred Sant, now consigned to the foot-notes of history after a series of electoral defeats.
We come not to bury Caesar but to describe his successor, so enough about the old, in with the new. I'm not labouring (geddit?) under the illusion that many MLP delegates read this, so I won't pretend that I'd be delivering a useful service if I pot up the candidates in "short notes" format, a format much beloved of examiners who don't wish to have the task of ploughing through full essays about the same thing.
I'm still going to do it, though, in your service and for the fun of continuing to irritate all those Labour elves who wish we'd all just shut up about this particularly enjoyable spasm of their internecine strife.
In reverse order of coming home (to use a racing term) purely from my own perception, which is enlightened only by my own hunches and nothing else, here are the candidates for your delectation.
Romping home in last place, I believe, will be Evarist Bartolo. I was in something of a quandary whether to place the intellectual much loved in Sliema last or whether to put the less intellectual, but no less loved Marie Louise Coleiro Preca in the place of least honour, but on balance, I think Varist deserves it.
Seen for a brief period as one of the better Ministers of Education (certainly the best Labour minister, though the competition here was not great) he was booted out of office when Sant lost it over a yacht marina and since then, he's been out of the spot-light, pretty much. Before that, Bartolo was always there and thereabout, never far from the centre of power but far enough to be able to distance himself from the excesses of which the MLP regularly delivered itself, thus keeping himself kosher for the Sliema crowd.
Since then, he's been more at the fringes, and it's for this reason that I can't see enough delegates thinking that he'd be a good choice. He's neither fish nor fowl, not Alfred enough but not not Alfred enough, if you catch my drift.
Almost tying with Bartolo for last place, but pulling slightly ahead after having been endorsed by Decrepit Old Labour and by having stuck up for the Brigata Laburista, is Coleiro Preca.
She was a Labour activist in the good old days pre-1987 and has always soldiered in the ranks, never before aspiring to high office, for all that she was General Secretary back in the day. Why she thinks she stands a chance now is not immediately clear, given that she doesn't seem to have the benefit of being the Anointed One or of having the party machine grinding away in her favour. An also-ran if ever there was one.
Trundling along in mid-field is Michael Falzon, handicapped by a party machine that appears to have decided to turn on one of its own out of sheer expediency. He's a solid candidate, leaving aside some lapses in the singing department, but one who will be given the cold shoulder because it has been decreed that he is not to be The Special One and, hey, someone has to take the blame for the third defeat in a row, it being unthinkable that the ultimate crime of pointing a finger at The Leader be perpetrated.
Falzon acted with honour during the crucial hours between vote and result and for this reason will be seen by the delegates virtually as a traitor to the cause. These people, who believe what they are told and, in the main, lack the critical faculties to question the "high ups" will come to the conclusion that because Falzon was there when their delusions were shattered, it was his fault and his alone.
The report into Labour's third defeat, apparently drawn up with less than seemly haste, also adds a good dose of fuel to this particular heap of firewood piled under Falzon.
Coming in second will be George Abela, the candidate most favoured by those of us who want a reasonable, if tough to beat, leader for the MLP, which would be a nice change when you think of the acts he has to follow.
Being seen as reasonable after Mintoff, KMB and Sant is hardly a Herculean task and it is the paradox that is the Labour Party that it is for this very reason, that he is a refreshing change from this trio of characters, that Abela won't make it. The machine turned on him from day one and, while it is pretty useless at winning elections, it's a great little operation when it comes to stopping people from making waves that threaten to engulf the machine itself.
In chucking a spanner into Abela's works, said machine had a nifty little tool available - all they had to do was play on the twin components of the mind-set of your common or garden delegate. Abela had abandoned The Leader in his hour of need (never mind that it was Sant who brought the whole shooting match crashing down and who has been responsible for Labour being unelectable since 1998) and Abela was being praised by the nasty Nationalists, therefore he was the wrong man for the job.
From a partisan Nationalist point of view Abela is, actually, the wrong man for the job: he'd give them a run for their money and a bit come the next elections. This is not something that will easily penetrate the siege-mentality that inhibits most delegates' thought processes. So really, the only question that remains is whether Muscat, described variously as The Anointed One, The Special One, The One With The Enormous Brain, Sant Mark Two and, with somewhat less respect, That Flipping Pipsqueak, will get in with 50%+1 straight off or whether he will have to go for two rounds.
The smart money (and this time, it's not Jason Micallef giving the racing tips) is on Muscat getting the nod in round one, the machine having collared enough delegates' votes to make a run-off un-necessary.
What makes Muscat such a shoo-in, then?
Well, for starters, he's such a darling young man, giving the delegates the comfortable feeling that by having him at the helm, the "youth vote" is a foregone conclusion come the day. He's also got a Big Brain, as evidenced by his CV, and an affable personality, as evidenced by his virtually perpetual smile, two attributes that his main competitor has in spades but which in George Abela are eclipsed by the thumbs-down given by the ghosts in the machine.
And Joseph Muscat's camp has convinced everyone that the Great Man, the One Who Gets Standing Ovations Even Though He's A Serial Loser, has nodded favourably in his direction, which when you think about it, has to be enough to convince enough delegates to go with the flow.
The really bad thing about all this is that the vote is on Thursday and even if there isn't a run-off (which I still think there might be, and if there is, Muscat has to have got at least 43% of the vote to be safe) it will too late for me to give you the benefit of my erudition (enough hilarity there in the cheap seats) in my Saturday column.