Marie-Louise Coleiro Preca has thrown her hat into the ring for the Labour Party's top job. In an interview with Mark Micallef, she says she has no shame about her political past and believes she can be a woman of the people.
Marie-Louise Coleiro Preca is one woman who has climbed the political ladder from the very bottom rung, joining the Labour Party aged just 16. In her own words, she started off from the lowest levels in the party before eventually making it to the post of general secretary when she was just 23.
She was one of the youngest general secretaries as well as the first - and so far only - woman to hold such a post. It's a trajectory she carries with her in the populist left wing politics she propounds and the image - not just an image as her success with the grassroots attests - of being a woman of the people.
Ironically, the launch of her bid for the leadership race on Friday came in the shadow of the unpopular directive by the party's vigilance and discipline board to ban candidates in the leadership race from speaking to the media, a move which left many baffled.
The news of the ban emerged shortly after Ms Coleiro Preca circulated a notice saying that she would be holding a press conference on Friday in connection 'with the party's future and her role in it'.
"I believe we need to be as transparent as possible," she said in the press conference, registering her disagreement with the directive, before she went on to reveal that it had been surprisingly lifted, just a few hours, on Thursday evening, after it became public knowledge.
True to style, she would not speculate on whether the curious move was merely a case of bad judgment.
"I don't have the facts so I don't want to be presumptuous... In these cases it's very difficult to have facts... God forbid I should start thinking that it wasn't (a bona fide case) because we would really have a problem."
Still, when pressed on the issue, she adds: "To tell the truth; I felt that the directive was not fair, particularly in my regard because I was the only person who hadn't confirmed I would contest. Despite the fact that my name cropped up quite a number of times in the press, I never said yes. So technically I could say that the directive didn't apply to me."
Whatever the intentions, especially now that it has been reversed, the move comes across as a serious gaffe seemingly in a series of strategic mistakes many have been attributing to the Labour campaign for a number of weks.
Again, she refuses to point fingers, but concurs that strategically there was a problem. Besides the fact that the party had shortcomings in the way it communicated with the people, particularly on the Internet, she explains, there was not enough fieldwork. This is the centrepiece of the organisation reform she believes Labour should be doing.
Her vision for the party, in fact, appears to be inward looking. She talks of keeping the party closer to the people, and rediscovering its identity and its social democratic values to make it more distinct from the Nationalist Party.
The analysis that Labour kept a tight hold on its grassroots but simply failed to attract floating voters does not tell the whole picture, she says, arguing that there might have been a switch of allegiance from Labour to PN and vice versa which did not show in the results. Nevertheless, she rejects theories that her plan is aimed solely at Labourites.
"What I'm saying is that we need to explain who we are and what we believe in to those out there who do not really understand. Our values were not really being brought to the fore and that's a mistake in my view. I am sure that there is a large swathe of people who do not identify with our party but who will agree with us on the validity of our social democratic values outside the context of the party itself. These values need to be more evident, our politics need to be hinged more directly on them."
Still, Labour's general secretary between 1982 and 1991 might find it difficult to convince non-Labourites about these values. Here, she strikes a sensitive chord, even though her argument is not impassioned.
"I am not ashamed of my political past," she says bluntly. "I was general secretary of the party and when there was abuse of power nobody consulted the party... they just went ahead and did it. If whoever abused power was not brought to book, that is something else. But, again, we had a series of such stories... we cannot just focus on a part of the story.
"I am against violence wherever it comes from and this country went through some very unfortunate and shameful incidents," she continues. "As a citizen I am still expecting justice for the families of Karin Grech and Raymond Caruana."
Looking ahead, she points out one of the main pledges that she stressed during her press conference, to install a mechanism of self-evaluation, which is aimed specifically at implementing constant change and not only contemplating change "when disaster strikes".
"I'm talking of a constant evaluation process of auto-critique in which I believe firmly, on an organisational level but even on an individual level. The hierarchy of the party has to be evaluated continuously... Even I myself, if elected leader, would have to submit myself to periodic evaluation... in every aspect but especially in ethical matters... Unfortunately this country lags behind in these areas. We still don't really have a culture of public responsibility."
It's the same auto-critique that many now recognise was not working within the Labour Party and what is likely to have led to failure.
"I don't think we had a process of auto-criticism," she says candidly, holding back, however, when asked to explain the comment. "I don't know why but I hope that this will be something the party learns now - that we need a process of self-evaluation or analysis, call it what you like. That doesn't happen sporadically but it's an ongoing thing."
Again, she will not point fingers. "I will definitely not be pointing any fingers. Nobody works alone. Moreover, I think we should see what the report on the electoral defeat tells us and embark on an auto-critical process that sheds light on the whole picture and not only parts of it. Then everybody has to be humble and courageous enough to take that criticism. But we need serious reflection." Still, the baggage of having been a heavyweight in the party in the past decade also brings with it the baggage of having lobbied against EU membership.
"I personally think that EU membership is no longer an issue," she reacts, adding that the results do not really suggest that the issue created by the Nationalists on this matter made any particular inroads.
"I think that as a people, it's not healthy for us to keep bringing up this issue. Membership is a reality, we are members of the European Union so our focus should be to make the best of it. I, for one, think that in the circumstances of globalisation, membership is offering us a cushion," she continues.
This is in stark contrast to Labour's battle cry before Malta joined the EU. Does she feel her party's position was mistaken?
"We didn't explain ourselves well enough. I'm not going to go into the slogans 'Switzerland in the Mediterranean', 'Partnership' and so on... Our message was that we weren't ready for membership.
"It's not a question of the EU being bad. The Nationalist Party as far back as the 1990s wanted us to join the EU, but procrastinated with the reforms needed to upgrade the country in general. So a number of issues stemming from the acquis came upon us all of a sudden..."
As things stand today, she said, it is the Nationalist Party which seems to fall short of endorsing the EU's values, despite having been the party to lobby for it.
"Take, for instance, the issue of consumer protection, which is part of competition policy. The EU doesn't talk about the single market and competition without also talking about the rights that consumers should have. How much has consumer policy been a priority for the Government since we've joined the EU?"
There were other priorities, such as the euro. "With all due respect, you cannot open your doors to competition without safeguarding the rights of consumers.
"In June last year," she says, "we were supposed to have passed a consumer law through parliament - as part of the commitments we had with the European Commission. It wasn't discussed until December. It came in January, instead, some 15 days before Parliament was dissolved...
"Had I not intervened to make sure we had extra sittings in the Committee for Consideration of Bills... we would still be without this law. So, what I'm saying is, you cannot champion the EU only when it suits you. Consumer protection is something we've been talking about for a while now, but we were ignored."
Her candidature as a woman is a progressive break on Malta's male-dominated political landscape, but while she has been in the party long enough to be able to make the confident claim that her gender never hindered her political career, when it comes to competing with a man for the post of Prime Minister it might be a different story with the wider electorate.
She rejects the idea, playing her card as a 'woman of the people'. "I have faith in the Maltese and think that basically they want someone with good judgment and competence and that it doesn't matter whether that person is a man or a woman.
"I think the support that I have attracted in my district, which has constantly changed and therefore presented significant challenges, shows that this is not an issue because I have consistently been the one to obtain the largest amount of votes."
Indeed, she has been one of Labour's best performers at the polls since she first contested the local elections in 1998. On March 8, Ms Coleiro Preca was the first candidate to be elected with 5,490 first count votes.