Yes, it is our business
This article is published in The Malta Independent on Sunday today.
The Labour Party appears to believe that the election of its new leader – as though it is not a foregone conclusion already – is purely an internal matter. The rest of us, it says, should stay out.
Labour supporters are all over the Internet telling us to mind our own business. Labour columnists like Norman Hamilton and Anthony Licari, both of The Times, are telling us how kind we are to offer advice – thanks but no thanks. Licari is arguing for Joseph Muscat (birds of a feather flock together) and against George Abela (ditto). He seems to think that his opinion is valid because he supports the Labour Party but mine, for example, is not.
Oh how wrong these people are. Aside from the fact that the entire country has a vested interest in who becomes leader of the Labour Party, because he or she is a potential prime minister, the ‘market research’, so to speak, is being done the wrong way round. In its selection of the new leader – a false selection, because the leader is chosen already – the Labour Party is referring for a verdict to those who would vote Labour even if the party were to be led by a one-eyed singing monkey or Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici (or Alfred Sant, or even a twerp called Joseph Muscat). The market research is all internal, and therefore pointless.
It is pointless because the new market for Labour is not among party delegates or among the Labour hardcore – that 47% or thereabouts of the electorate who will vote Labour out of blind loyalty, and who did so, incredibly, in 1981, 1987, and even 1992, when the party was still led by Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici and they wanted him back to replace Fenech Adami as prime minister. No, the market is not there. The market is among people who don’t vote Labour, who didn’t vote Labour in this last election, and whose votes the Labour Party needs if it is going to win the next one. Labour must ask these people what they think about having Joseph Muscat as their potential prime minister, and if the reaction is one of horror or dismay now, the party can rest assured that it will be one of horror or dismay in 2013. The party may struggle to change these people’s minds, but why on earth begin with a deficit of trust and make the next five years an uphill battle?
In the on-line poll run by The Times, George Abela far outstripped Joseph Muscat as the readers’ choice. In a similar poll before the general election, when readers were asked who they preferred as prime minister, Gonzi polled something like 71% of the votes while Sant polled 29%. These proportions stayed more or less consistent even though the number of voters increased by the thousand or so every day. So here the Labour Party has a pretty good idea that readers of The Times on-line, who in their very vast majority prefer Lawrence Gonzi, also prefer George Abela to Joseph Muscat. Because Labour needs the people who voted for Lawrence Gonzi this time if it is to win next time, it had better pick up this clue to success. Another clue it should pick up is that large numbers of people stayed at home rather than vote Labour in the last election, because they didn’t want Sant as prime minister. Are they likely to vote for a Sant clone and acolyte? The party can be sure that the Nationalists will spend the next five years reminding the electorate that Joseph Muscat is sewn into the hem of Sant’s petticoat.
So why isn’t the Labour Party asking us? There are two simple answers to that question. The first is that we are telling them, whether they ask us or not, something that they do not want to hear: that the new leader should be George Abela. They don’t want George Abela; they’ve been told to want Joseph Muscat. Unfortunately, what they are hearing from the I-don’t-vote-Labour-but-Labour-needs-my-vote camp is that Joseph Muscat is a twerp with pretensions, and he can have all the university certificates in the world but we still don’t trust his judgement. Also, we don’t like the fact that he sailed to the top by being obedient to Sant, by abstaining in the referendum because Sant told him to do so, and by spending the run-up to that referendum frightening people about the consequences of EU membership and trying to sell them Sant’s skewed vision of ‘partnership’. All this, if you please, from somebody who, like his mentor before him, is waving his university degrees in economics and business administration in our faces as proof that he is qualified to run the country. In response to this, all I can say is that the man with the Harvard DBA in business management ran the country into the ground in 22 months and got the EU membership issue all wrong, while the man with the same university degree as Anglu Farrugia took us into the Eurozone and practically killed off unemployment.
The second answer is that the Labour Party isn’t too hot on strategy. In the Labour way of doing things, strategy means pussyfooting around for five years, then flinging mud around for the first five weeks of an election campaign, visiting Buskett and Kennedy Grove and the Paraventu with the press in tow, and renaming your 12-year-old Cittadinmobil the kowc tal-bidla. Then when you’ve run out of ‘ideas’, you sit back and hope that some party mole in a private corporation will come across a copy of a notarial contract that a nightclub promoter has shown the mole’s bosses in the hope of securing a sponsorship deal, and that the mole will come running to you with it so that you can wave it around in the prime minister’s face on the last day of the campaign. And of course you will have to hope that nobody asks why the first page of the contract is missing, so that you don’t have to tell them that your mole removed the first page, which was stamped ‘Received on’ followed by the date and the name of the private corporation for which he works. You don’t want the private corporation starting an internal inquiry to remind its employees that their first loyalty is to their employer and not to the Labour Party.
We are speaking here of a secretary-general who comes across as the male equivalent of a dumb chick, who even after the election had come and gone was still insisting that there were 17,000 new voters when there were 34,000. This isn’t just a mistake in numbers, but a serious reflection on just how much Jason Micallef didn’t have a clue what he was doing or was meant to do. Over on the other side of the barbed wire, in the Nationalist Party trenches, the secretary-general was organising a streamlined ‘instant response’ campaign involving hundreds of volunteers and professionals, a campaign which was adapted minute on the minute as the situation evolved. Labour, on the other hand, didn’t so much hit the ground running as hit the ground and break both ankles, leaving it incapacitated for the rest of the race. The party had no campaign strategy to speak of. It had no campaign, full stop. It didn’t even have any newspaper advertisements until late in the day, and its upended containers were draped with images that were clearly designed to fit the dimensions of a billboard. The party didn’t know whether it was coming or going. One minute it was shouting about corruption. The next minute its leadership troika accompanied by the clueless secretary-general, all of them with the demeanour of graveside mourners, were filmed by the media trying to get into a disused rubbish dump to prove that it wasn’t disused, with the secretary-general heard on camera saying: “But isn’t this public property?” And the security official saying: “No, actually it’s not. It’s run by a company called Wasteserv.”
Would it even occur to any of the bright bulbs up at Mile End to canvass people who don’t vote Labour for their opinion of what possible leader is most likely to encourage them to vote Labour (or at least not to fight like crazy every five years to ensure that Labour is not elected)? Well, I wouldn’t think so, because the brightest bulbs have all departed and what’s left is Sant’s gang – Joseph Muscat, Jason Micallef, Manwel Cuschieri – and those over whose intellectual capacities I had better draw a discreet veil, like Michael Falzon and Anglu Farrugia. I can’t see any of them sitting down and saying: “I know, why don’t we ask those who don’t vote Labour which potential leader is most likely to attract them to Labour?”
Sant’s gang aren’t going to ask because they put personal ambition before the interest of the party (Sant stayed on despite losing two general elections and a referendum, and went on to lose another election as a result, and he still has no regrets). As for the rest, the least said about their brainpower, the better.
So they are going to choose Joseph Muscat, and when we tell them that this doesn’t work for us, they tell us that it’s an internal matter and why don’t we go and check out the goings-on at the Nationalist Party instead. Really, it’s no wonder they’ve been on a losing ticket since 1976, and by the time the 2013 general election comes round, Alfred Sant’s election-win-on-the back-of-VAT will be the only electoral majority this mess has been able to win in almost four decades.
The main problem with the Labour Party is that it insists on choosing ‘Labour leader’ material rather than prime ministerial material. If the party wishes the people to choose its leader as prime minister in 2013, it had better make damn sure that he falls within the prime ministerial category – and Joseph Muscat certainly does not. Nor is he the type who can be groomed for the role, as Eddie Fenech Adami and Lawrence Gonzi were. He just doesn’t have the depth or the qualities. He is a follower, not a leader, and what’s worse is that the person he follows is Alfred Sant.
Daphne Caruana Galizia writes a column on Thursdays for The Malta Independent.
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It is also our business”to know when JPO will stop thinking about his own interests and start thinking about those of his country and the party trying to govern it.
What a pity that George Abela is black-balled. They are really making a good job of cutting their nose to spite their face …. and ours. George Abela would have been ideal.
Who said lately. “As a maltese citizen I would love to see Abela as leader; as a nationalist, I’d much rather not”, or something to that effect. He could not have been more honest than that.
So Daphne,could you kindly let us know in your opinion who “falls within the prime ministerial category” in the MLP?
Michael Falzon’s speech to launch his candidature was very entertaining. First of all his slogan is: b’esperjenza u lealta’: FLIMKIEN lejn is-success. Falzon is now on the Flimkien bandwagon!
And then listen to this reference to JM as reported by the Times: “he has several proposals in mind but did not want to have a ready made plan, preferring to map out a programme with a Labour team.”
And this one to Jason: He cited as an example the last general election when he remained at the counting hall with the party electoral staff till the very end”
It’s getting hotter and hotter!
@M. Cutajar – I’ve answered that question several times on this blog and in my newspaper column already. George Abela is definitely prime minister material, and secretly, even the Labour Party knows this. But of course, Alfred Sant remains in control, he has chosen his successor, and he would never tolerate the Abela option.
Thank you Daphne for answering my question. Actually I already knew that you find GA as prime minister material, but I thought perhaps you might have someone else on your mind as well.
@DCG
Given that Evarist Bartolo seems to concur with your “market analysis” of choosing a potential Prime Minister with appeal to the middle-class and to the changing political demographics of Malta [his Sunday interview in The Times], if Sant is pulling the strings, where does this put Bartolo in relationship to George Abela, or himself, for bringing the “right” choice to the MLP leadership? For Bartlo’s being so close to Sant, it is also hard to see how well Bartolo can manage to distance himself from Sant, and also reform his own image and analysis as “progressive” for the MLP.
@Romegas
Well, the “Flimkien” bandwagon already proved to be successful twice. First with Sarkozy and then with Gonzi, so I don’t blame Micheal for trying his luck as well!
SB on Mar 30, 2008
@Romegas
Well, the “Flimkien” bandwagon already proved to be successful twice. First with Sarkozy and then with Gonzi, so I don’t blame Micheal for trying his luck as well!
You forgot to mention the FLIMKIEN ghal Ambjent Ahjar group.
@Pinkerton
Hehe true! However, I don’t think that they were that successful. Or were they?
Let us give Joseph Muscat the benefit of the doubt and assume that he has matured and that he will really be his own man. Assuming that, I’d still think that the time is not right for him to take over as leader. I do not think that whatever his intentions he will manage to clear out people like Manwel and Jason. I think the MLP needs a strong and seasoned leader and the only one that fits the bill is George Abela. Evarist Bartolo talked a lot of sense in today’s papers, unfortunately he did not have the balls to say these things 5yrs ago.
If Joseph Muscat is really leadership material he can wait 10yrs or so after George Abela has had a shot at the job. Abela is the only one capable of weeding out the administration clan and that is why Jason and co. are doing their best to keep him out.
SB on Mar 30, 2008
@Pinkerton
Hehe true! However, I don’t think that they were that successful. Or were they?
Time will tell. It also depends on what yardstick is applied when one says “successful”.
I do not quite follow the logic behind Gorg Vella for labour preference.
Dr Abela was Labour Party Deputy Leader when AS was in government. That Government had frozen Malta’s application to join EU yet Abela was totally against labour going to early polls when Sant was not willing to be Mintoff’s stooge.
If Gorg Abela had his way Malta would today NOT be an EU member!
So why Gorg Abela?
maria vella
Maria Vella’s comment is the sharpest comment I have read since this website came into existence. Truly, why are people, most of which clearly declare that they “will never vote MLP”, because of among other things violence and anti-EU position, clamouring for Dr Abela? Wasn’t he too, though not a minister, the second man at the top of the MLP in government, under Alfred Sant? He left the party because he realised that the MLP would lose the election. He did not want the MLP to lose power. Dr Abela is a very able man, but history moves on. In any case the clock cannot be put back 10 years. As things stand now, Dr Abela can’t really succeed in uniting the party. And, well, the guys at PN HQ just LOVE it when centrifugal forces begin knocking the MLP around! Enough said.
Why are you backing Gorg Abela’s bid for leader?He is another looser like the other bunch.He was Sant’s an when he fooled 52% of the population in 1996,with the Vat removal,EU freezing,and all the fake promises they said just for the sake to get in power.
On the other hand,he was only QormiFC ans MFA president.Does anyone knows what sort of other posts of sucess he was in?Besides that Priministral matiriel would put Malta before anything,not the GWU.Would you imagine another marriage between these two again.
Daphne can you please comment?
Keep up the good job you are doing.
My preference for MLP leader and a possiblity of future PM will be Marie Luoise Coliero Preca.I think that it is something new for Malta and she has a very good social background and great charm.I am from Qormi and I happen to know a bit about MLCP and GA and can see the first as more priministeial material then the latter.
As a nationalist I would like that MLP choose(I think they already did) Joseph Muscat since he is an easier prey for future electoral campaigns due to his vision of visions before 2003 ie ‘Alla hares qatt nidhlu f Ewropa’.
@Edward Clemmer – it is not Bartolo’s close friendship with Sant that I now find most disturbing, after reading his interview with The Sunday Times, but the revelation that he really didn’t have a clue how the Labour Party and its messages were perceived in the campaign period. I ask myself – if I knew, with no surveys, polls or professional market analysis to hand, but purely through observation and the deployment of commonsense and an understanding of how people’s minds work, how could he – a politician of long experience – have failed to pick up the same messages that I did? I was astonished to read that he convened a group of university students for their opinion AFTER the election rather than before, when he teaches at the university and is surrounded by students every day. He could have picked up that information through simple conversation, and without gathering together a focus group. And he should have done it before the election, not afterwards. Even I could have told him that the slogan Bidu Gdid would frighten people rather than attract them. He shouldn’t have needed a focus group after the event to discover this. That’s what I find so worrying: he couldn’t work out these simple things and yet he wants to be leader. Before the election, his newspaper columns were full of self-confident statements like ‘we will win because people are turning from the PN to Labour’. And now he wants to distance himself from failure, when he was part of that failure.
@Bootroom – Joseph Muscat will never clear out Jason and Manwel Cuschieri. They are actually his allies. Jason is a personal, family friend and Manwel Cuschieri is now to serve as his rottweiller in the leadership campaign.
@ Maria Vella – you have a strong point, and yet he had the guts to follow through with his own personal convictions on the EU membership matter, leave the party, participate in the MEUSAC negotations and support the Yes campaign, even if not in the public eye. This indicates true leadership qualities. Joseph Muscat, on the other hand, stayed with Sant, tried to sell Sant’s fictitious partnership to the people, abstained in the referendum, tried to frighten us with horror stories about the EU, and carried on sitting on Sant’s bandwagon right up to the present day. He is a follower, not a leader, and a dishonest one at that – trying to sell us something that not even he believed in.
If the lab administration and their supporters were to change their negative attitude Lino Spiteri would be an ideal leader, but if if if and a big IF. Labour will NEVER change.
I am no fan of Mintoff but i think we can credit him with knowing his own. Remember when way back in 1998 he accused the Sant faction of “hatfu l-magna tal partit”? That still holds true and that is why Gorg Abela is finding everything so difficult. But I say to him don’t loose hope because as the saying goes ‘it-tigrija sal-barkun”.
Bendu: You mentioned Lino Spiteri. Wasn’t he part of Mintoff”s cabinet? Much good did the administration of those times do to the country! I don’t care if he ever stood up to Mintoff in private meetings and I am not impressed when people like him try to write history from their perspective (DeMarco did it as well) just because they have a good pen. We all lived through those times. He wasn’t much good during the Sant administration because he left after five months. Now people quote him and praise him for his intelligence (even EFA did it once and i hated him for it). It is very convenient to be an armchair critic and write about almost everything under the sun. But how much better it would have been for all of us if people like him translated their intelligence into good hard deeds for their country! The proof of the pudding is in eating it. One can write as much as one wants but it is another thing to ‘act’ and to be able to do what you preach.
A few years back I once saw Spiteri walking down republic street with his family and he was holding hands with his favourite Valentina, the one he writes poetry about. By the expression of his face you could see that he was in seventh heaven and rightly so. But a tear dropped from my eyes and i thought to myself: You can be happy and enjoy Saturday morning with your little nephew (and you can buy her all the chocolate you want) but when you were a minister we couldn’t afford such luxury. We were always afraid of what would happen next; afraid of finding our children”s schools closed; had only one option for chocolate and a million other worries. So why would Lino Spiteri be a good leader?
michael falzon looked good with his wife and family the other day. I believe he could change things around as MLP leader. As may also varist. but you say that joseph muscat’s election is a foregone conclusion? why would all the others be contesting then?
In the week before the election i met a young lawyer in Valletta who impressed me with his quite humble intellect. I was aghast to learn that he was going to contest as a candidate for the MLP. I for one think this is one to watch, even though he did badly at the hustings. His name is Simon Micallef Stafrace. Now that i think is future MLP leadership material. As for today’s article, Daphne, it is a done deal. Prominent MLP people have told me that the poodle ‘s blitzkrieg and subsequent muzzling of anyone else had been planned by no less than the Harvard Man himself, using his old Phil Noble Textbook. He is still in control of the MLP and will have his protege elected so that he can lead by PRoxy.Maria’s pont is a strong one, however, and i have heard it is being used precisely to rule him out. Pity. THe MLP needs a good Lijder like a drowning man needs a liferaft. The more they fight around it, the more fragmented the party is becoming. Maybe thats not such a bad thing. I for one would love to have the MLP implode and something else rising out of the ashes. This party has to know that it has to hurt and hurt and hurt before anyone really believes that it has changed.
@Bendu
Lino Spiteri I believe is in his 70s or close to them. He’s way past it.
@Daphne
I recall Gorg Abela’s anti-eu speaches prior to the 96 election ‘L-Ewropa mandniex bzonna’ he used to holler on the mass meeting podiums. And its admirable that he has changed his convictions you say.
The truth is that due to an internal feud with Sant GA wanted to distance himself from the MLP purely out of spite.
GA just wants to opportunistically get back on the bandwagon at the helm of MLP without having made any form of contribution over the last 10yrs.
After not managing to do this he will attempt (aided by the PN media and PN Groupies) to form his own party with a so called splinter group.
There we will see the leadership skills he showed so strongly leading the Malta Football Association and Qormi FC (sic)
Thank you Daphne for your comments. I am still not so much in tune with the logic. Gorg Abela did not leave the MLP because of Europe but because the MLP was going back to the electorate with the serious risk of losing power as it did. That is (at least the known reason) why he walked. Moreover, covert support to the yes campaign does not strike as qualities of a leader. Covert can work in double-direction depending on convenience. I may be of course wrong but that is how I see it at this point. Thanks and keep the good work going.
Happy Birthday Doctorrrrrrr Licari
Here’s your pressie
http://www.hobbylinc.com/htm/dum/dum1704.htm
Apparently the Poodle is on the warpath to eliminate The Peacock… or is it just a ruse?
http://www.maltarightnow.com/?module=news&at=Joseph+Muscat+ma+jridx+lil+Jason+Micallef&t=a&aid=31039&cid=19
@Meerkat – I’m sure the Peacock will be a shoo-in for court jester once the Poodle Prince ascends the throne.
@ Paul Caruana
That’s good to know… I wouldn’t want to give up on The Comedy Hour
Erm…Daph, I don’t know how to put this without invoking your ire…
Isn’t Mr Hansford’s prog Realta’ aired tonight? He promised that it would be about the Mangion/Vella Income Tax scandal and the hissy fit he had with UHM on Xarabank…
I offered to go but he wanted to meet at dawn at Sarracin instead.
If Maria l-Maws had so many disagreements with Alfred Sant why did he not speak up at the time. Loyalty to the Party should mean doing everything to avoid the Party losing the third consecutive election. Or to whom was Maria l-Maws loyal? To himself and his political career. Or to Alfred Sant personally before the party? In that case he is just another poodle.
Somehow NOW all contestants are falling over themselves to tell us that they did not agree with Sant!
True Gorg Abela left becasue he did not agree with early elections in 1998. In 1996-1998 EU membership was considered a distant prospect and in fact the issue, unlike VAT, hardly made headlines in the 1996 election campaign.
If Sant put party interest before himself Abela would have both struck a deal with Mintoff and revived Malta’s application to the EU. His pragmatism was shown by his subsequent positive attitude to EU membership.
Leaders are made of stuff that when it matters they stand up to be counted. None of the other contestants pass this test better than GA. Daphne is right!
@ Maria Vella – hi again. I think that it is precisely because Abela was distant from the party 1998 to the present that he is not associated with all that mess in the eyes of the electorate. People who haven’t been voting Labour lately (or ever) are wary of anybody who has been too much linked with the party during Sant’s tenure.
I could never believe that you are realy speaking in the interest of the labour party. That would be a first for anyone. Afterall when has the foe ever told its enemy what weapons to use so he could beat him? But being on the subject perhaps you have a person in mind whom you think should rule the labour party. Would you be so kind as to tell the general public in the sunday column who he might be? I am no wise guy in the matter but I do believe that internal affairs should be dealt with internaly. After all before being the leader of a country or Prime minister one has to be the leader of his own party. Thank you for allowing me to express my opinion.
@Jeffrey
‘I could never believe that you are realy speaking in the interest of the labour party. That would be a first for anyone. Afterall when has the foe ever told its enemy what weapons to use so he could beat him?’
Please read all of Mrs Caruana Galizia blogs pertinent to your question.
As to what foe etc. etc., I can cite you, off hand, General Bernadotte fighting against the Swedes(his prisoners of war) telling them how best to safeguard their country from Good Old ‘Nappy’ before he sent them home. If the MLP are choosing a leader, they are also choosing a prospective PM; and as such it is also our business because he shall have to meet with our approval come next election.
Jeffrey: Weapons are tools. The discussion here is not about the weapons themselves, but about who may be using them. If you were talking about the appointment of a receptionist at the General Workers’ Union, you could justifiably speak of a purely internal matter. The leader of the MLP is a prospective Prime Minister. That concerns everyone, not just those who vote Labour.
@Jeffry
‘I could never believe that you are realy speaking in the interest of the labour party. That would be a first for anyone. Afterall when has the foe ever told its enemy what weapons to use so he could beat him?’
Dear Jeffry,
Your observation is the same expression of disbelief from Leo Brincat (28 November 2006) when he took up the issue of my book.
http://independent.com.mt/news.asp?newsitemid=42620
His article was very interesting. My response was published on 30 November 2006:
http://independent.com.mt/news.asp?newsitemid=42717
It seems that the answer in the differences of opinion between Leo and myself is provided in the campaign and election result of March 2008. I wonder what Leo would say now. However, I also notice that Evarist Bartolo seems to be speaking to the issue, and has adopted the viewpoints expressed by DCG on needing to appeal to the middle class. The issue now is whether or not the MLP delegates or electors for the next potential Prime Minister have gotten the message.
@Dear Jeffrey, from what I can gather, everyone here is a straightforward elector and not a politician or minister. Therefore it is in our interest to have a decent Labour Party and decent Labour leader, because we can’t rely on the prevalance of commonsense to keep the indecent or inept variety out of power for good. People who don’t vote Labour (yet) have a genuine vested interest in the reformation of the Labour Party and in who becomes its leader, because that person may very well be running our lives one day. The election of a Labour Party leader and possible future prime minister is not an internal matter but a matter of public interest, and if the Labour Party has any sense at all, it would actively seek to involve the public in the discussion, and find out what kind of person the public wants. By the time we are asked at a general election, it is way too late. You are free to express your opinion on this blog as long as it doesn’t include obscene language. This is not Maltastar.com.