The report analysing the MLP's conduct of its recent electoral campaign shows a fragmented, poorly organised party. The criticism is prejudicial to some of the contestants for the leadership of the party and the easily-anticipated controversy is given added spice.
For the 28,000 of us who voted neither PN nor MLP in the March election the whole affair is of marginal interest. I strongly suspect that it is not of overwhelming interest to most PN supporters while MLP supporters not immediately involved in the leadership stakes must feel mildly queasy about it all more than being focused on the outcome in the race.
Still, the newspapers are full of it. Yes, the MLP leader-to-be will be a potential Prime Minister and that is a matter which concerns us all. Will s/he also have the potential to challenge the PN's grip on power? Yes, we are curious about that but can we influence the result in any way? It feels a bit like taking an interest in the US election process. Will it be Barack Obama or will it be Hillary Clinton and then will the winner shake off John McCain? The whole world wants to know but who can influence the outcome?
Who said what to whom and how in response to which carefully measured insinuation is reported in minute detail and we end up gossiping about it in cafés mostly because we were informed not because we need to be nor because we wanted to know. What we do want to know is the result and that seems to take forever in the US primaries as well as in the MLP.
While the MLP is dissected and its innards publicly examined for omens, the PN is tacitly assumed to be solid, superbly organised and efficient. It was the winner, it secured the prize and it is not under examination. However, with less than 2,000 votes between them, every criticism, every revelation of weakness in the MLP diminishes the triumph of the PN. The more humiliating and pathetic the shortcomings of the MLP, the less impressive is the PN victory. With such a pushover opposing it, how did the PN still fail to gain an absolute majority of the vote?
Does the MLP require a superhuman at the helm to sweep to victory next time around? Does it really? My guess is that it needs a Teflon-coated personality such as the PN have managed to produce for more than two decades. Not a genius, not a naturally-iconic figure bursting with charisma, almost anyone would do if s/he can be given the mud-proofing required. The edification into Easter Island stature does not take very long. The challenge for the next MLP leader is not to lead magnificently but simply to survive the PN assault, the five-year demonisation process by an almost wholly hostile media set-up.
If PN supporters have every reason to doubt the firmness of their party's grip on power in the light of the true nature of their recent victory, the MLP has no reason to be complacent. The new leader must not humiliate internal adversaries in the moment of victory and risk an increase in the fragmentation of the party. The legacy s/he inherits is principally the dilemma of shifting to the centre while retaining the support of the old guard. The PN depends utterly on the failure of this enterprise for its hope of success.
A challenge they both face is to resist the seduction of propaganda, to rein in their propensity for fabricating reality, their unquestioned talent for fiction. While their loyal masses believe what they are asked to believe or gladly pretend that they do, the crucial votes belong to those who no longer believe in the PN or the MLP. People just like me.
Alternattiva Demokratika represents the most clearly identifiable unit in this crucial fraction and both the PN and the MLP have taken aim at all the issues raised and embraced by the Greens in the most complimentary of political exercises: they both want to be AD.
The real challenge lies elsewhere, a challenge to all political parties including the Greens: the non-voters, those who were immune to the most hysterical election campaign in two decades and did not vote, many not even collecting their voting document. Complacency in addressing this potentially-kaleidoscopic reality could be a killer.
We, the non-MLPN, cover the spectrum from the financially secure and politically complacent to those in every income bracket who are disgusted beyond words, from the self-conscious cynic to the idealist rendered allergic to everything political. Who can tell us something we all want to hear?
Dr Vassallo is chairman of Alternattiva Demokratika - the Green party.
www.alternattiva.org.mt, www.adgozo.com