Gosh, they’re going to publish and be damned
Who cares why we lost as long as I win?
The Labour Party’s ‘national executive’ – for such a disorganized bunch they’ve got a pretty complicated hierarchy – has decided to publish the ‘why we lost’ report. And please don’t all yell out in chorus ‘Oh, so they lost, then, did they? I thought the Nationalists stole it from them.’
Until Monday, which is the big day of its release, we can amuse ourselves by guessing at its contents. I wonder whether Godfrey Grima wrote it. He wrote the last one and he’s been doing a lot of hanging about with Jason and DoctorJosephMuscat (one word) recently. So let’s hazard some guesses at what’s in that report then.
1.The Nationalists had the power of incumbency. 2. The Nationalists had the power of incumbency. 3. The Nationalists had the power of incumbency. 4. They stole our votes. 5. A crack team at Air Malta gave cheap flights to people who wanted to fly in to vote PN and obstructed those who wanted to fly in to vote Labour. 6. The Malta Planning and Environment Authority issued hundreds of permits in the last week of the campaign. 7. The Inland Revenue waived tax arrears. 8. They’ve been viciously targeting DoctorElfridSant (one word) for years. 9. They’ve infiltrated the media. 10. They control all the systems of power. 11. They used their power of incumbency to promise favours.12. They bought votes from Labour drug-addicts for 70 euros (thank you for your investigations, Inspector Farrugia).
A little bird tells me that this report doesn’t contain a single sentence that even remotely resembles this one: we lost because the thrice-rejected Alfred Sant was still leader of the party and people didn’t want him as prime minister. The little bird might be wrong, but I doubt it. We’ll wait until Monday.
So members of the ‘national executive’ will get their copies of the ‘why we lost’ report on Monday night, and they have until Saturday to read it through – mouthing the words and moving their fingers along the page, probably, if it takes all that time to do it. On Saturday morning, they will discuss it at a meeting. If the meeting isn’t wrapped up that same morning, possibly because one half of the national executive has fallen out with the other half on the question of how many people were cheaply flown in to vote by Air Malta, the national executive will adjourn until the following Monday. At that point, the 80-page report will be uploaded onto the Labour Party website – the other one, not Maltastar.com – and the party delegates will be given the printed version. With luck, a good number of them will know how to read it, because they are expected to use it to form their decision on whom to vote for in the leadership election.
That should be interesting. ‘We lost because of DoctorElfridSant so let’s choose DoctorElfridSant Mk II.’
Some members of the national executive said that the ‘why we lost’ report shouldn’t be published because, they claimed, ‘the party’s agenda is being dictated by barranin.’ That doesn’t mean foreigners. It means outsiders. A couple of pragmatists said that once it would probably end up being leaked to the press anyway, they might as well limit the damage by publishing it themselves and preempting a leak.
In 2003, Labour had the same kind of ‘why we lost’ report. Godfrey Grima wrote it (and gosh, it must have been really perceptive, because look at them now). Members of the national executive were not entrusted with a copy of their own, one assumes because of the danger of leakage. I don’t know what they were so worried about. Like I said, Godfrey Grima wrote it, so I don’t imagine it contained any damning statements about how Alfred Sant made an utter hash of things and scared thousands of people away. Grima admires DoctorElfridSant and thinks that he is statesmanlike and that people were horribly mean to him. So back then, the national executive members who wanted to get a good look at the report had to read it on the premises at Labour HQ, possibly in a locked room with an armed guard after having been frisked for cameras and mobile phones with a photographic facility.
So remember that you heard it here first. Alfred Sant had nothing to do with the fact that Labour lost – sorry – had this election stolen from them. The fault lies at the door of the power of incumbency and Air Malta’s crack team of flight organisers. After all, this is the world capital of failure to assume responsibility for one’s actions.
41 Comments Comment
Tghid ikollu misprints dan ir-rapport, Daph?
Wanna bet our Daphne will be mentioned in the report? And what about the ‘qatta Universitarji hamalli’ (like Meerkat)?
What is all this fuss about this report ? The whole country has known why they lost twenty years ago. Whether Elfrid or Godfrey write the report is immaterial. The truth is an unaffordable commodity with lejber MLP lost because it chooses it’s leaders with hmieg, gideb, ittri anonimi, leakages, threats, blackmail, gakbinar anything as long as the wrong person gets the job. Let’s hope they will do the same again. It already looks as if they are going to maintain the tradition. More of the same please. Thank God they never learn. The moment they start doing things in a
civilized manner we will see Lawrence Gonzi losing his seemingly perennial grin. We will know in two weeks’s time . Watch Lawrence.
The report will criticize Michael Falzon for being out of tune at mass meetings.
The report will criticize George Abela for not helping out at the hour of need.
The report will criticize Evarist Bartolo for being totally indecisive and completely ineffective.
The report will criticize Marie-Luise Coleiro-Preca for having two hyphenated names, a bad hair cut and hand me down outfits.
The report will report that those four are unfit to lead the ‘Glorious Party’.
The report will encourage the Reds to look to the future under the leadership of the new Saviour (for now) – Joseph Muscat.
The report will recommend Charlon Gouder’s menacing smile replace ‘Pepsodent’ smile.
The report will promise an intense investigation and plugging up of all leaks around the Party HQ.
We all fear that after June 5, after the curtain falls, we will be bored to death, but let’s not all panic. The MLP has a knack of providing leaked entertainment with great regularity.
80 pages fr a report which needed no more than two words:
ALFRED SANT
On the same day at the same time one third of Malta gave Labour a majority of 52% in local lections and a minority of 48% in national elections. People wanted Labour in government but not AS as Prime Minsiter. It is that simple really.
There are rumours that the report that will be published is not the original as submitted. But a revised version after AS reviewed the first report and sent it back to the authors with his ‘suggestions’
If this is truly the case Labour should do themselves a favour and publish nothing at all.
@ amrio
Yep, I am a hamalla and proud of it too!
Btw, last week, I forgot which day it was, Thurs or Friday (at around 19.00ish I espied AS walking briskly across the canteen quad…He cut quite a lonely figure: no Peacocks, elephants, Maws, Lions etc did I miss someone from the AS menagerie? Ah, yes the Poodle.
Min jaf x’gie jaghmel? Sulu sulu… Tghid biex jorganizza debate ghall-Poodle & co? Now, that would be fun!!!
I am informed that the report is a well-written and well-researhed piece co-authored by a very competent team made up of five persons, namely, in strict alphabetical order, Dr Carmel Borg, Dr Renee Laiviera, Mr Stanley Mifsud, Dr Joseph Pirotta and Dr Carmen Sammut.
It appears that the major reason identified for the TELFA ELETTORALI is – you guessed – Dr Alfred Sant himself. It appears that the confident and suave pre-1996 Dr Alfred Sant started, post-1998, becoming subject to increasing levels of pressure-cooker pressure and internal party discontent, to which his reaction was that of increasing the fortification of his fortizza by a good number of cronies and yes men who, in the final analysis, ended up leading him up the garden path. Eventually the end result was that, by 2008, the man ended up as the lone king of the Fortizza with practically no communication with the peasants. This whole scenario really reminds me of the cartoon series we used to see when we were kids (I am piu’ o meno Daphne’s age) called King Arthur and the Square Knights of the Round Table.
I was present, some 5 weeks before the election, at a consultation meeting where 9 Labour top guns, including Dr Falzon and Dr Mangion, were present and it was clear that only Dr Alfred Sant was “authorised” to speak, with the rest of the bunch only dropping in with irrelevant unmeaningful interventions.
So the point is that the release of the report will continue underlying the real reason for the TELFA ELETTORALI and this will not spell any good news to the Muscat camp.
Can we take this as a sign that the guys within the Fortizza will, at this crucial point in time, be subject to a veritable siege by St George.
He did kill the dragon but this time round it is a different matter altogether.
After completing my previous post, I got curious on King Arthur and the Square Knights of the Round Table, so I googled and found some interesting stuff on Wikipaedia, which fellow bloggers might wish to share:
Arthur! and the Square Knights of the Round Table
Arthur! And the Square Knights of the Round Table was an Australian animated series based on the legend of King Arthur of Camelot.
The series was produced from 1966 to 1968 and written by Melbourne playwright Alex Buzo and British-born entertainer Rod Hull, with Lyle Martin, M. Robinson, and John Palmer. The characters included King Arthur, Guinevere, Lancelot, Merlin, the Jester, the Black Knight, and Morgan le Fay. The actors who voiced the character parts in the series included: John Meillon (as “Arthur”), Lola Brooks (as “Guinevere” and “Morgana le Fay”), John Ewart, Kevin Golsby, and Matthew O’Sullivan.
A typical conversation would be:
Black Knight: It’s me! It’s me! Despicable me! There’s no other villain it could possibly be! I’m low and misbegotten.
Morgana la Fey: You’re absolutely rotten.
Black Knight: Medieval evil.
Morgana la Fey: You think just like a weevil.
Black Knight: Medieval evil meeee!
This animated childrens television series centres on King Arthur and Camelot, dungeons, dragons, wizards, witches, spells, love potions, castles, moats, duels, knights and princesses. More hysterical than historical, Arthur and the Square Knights of the Round Table is one very warped account of merry old England. 39 half hour episodes (3 x 6 min. segments with 3 segment bridges in between) and Special: 1 x one hour.
There are also some posters of the series which the Moderator or Daphne can really make good use of and paste on this blog so as to permit the rest of us to have a better feel of the spirit of this KAMPANJA ELETTORALI GHALL-LIJDER.
Do you think the report will be a rehash of previous ones in which case I don`t think the MLP will gain much.
Or did the MLP faithfully remedy the reasons given in the other reports and new problems arose in the last 5 years.
@ Amrio -I think you forgot to mention the english newspapers (never mind that they have so many MLP columnists)
Let’s get real!
It is true that the power of incumbency can get you votes. Any government would do that within democratically allowed limits.
But it is also true that long tenure of power begets you liability of incumbency, ergo the thousands of Nationalists who opted not to vote.
In the last elections the liability of incumbency was as big as and probably bigger than the power of incumbency.
Hope the
No one who has read official documents needs to be told how easy it is to conceal the essential truth under the apparently candid and all- disclosing phrases of a voluminous and particularizing report….
(Woodrow Wilson)
I don’t really think people didn’t want alfred sant as a prime minister…he did win over almost half of the electorate…by the same token, almost half of the electorate didn’t want Gonzi as their prime minister.
Alfred Sant managed to win the electorate over back in 1996 with a whopping 6000 votes,incredible performace for a “beginner”, Gonzi today, a “beginner” too, didn’t even get closer to that..even when people knew about Sant’s failings as a prime minister only 1500 preferred Gonzi…Sant’s incompetence back then led him to being voted out in the successive general elections. Gonzi’s incompetence now, will probably lead him to being voted out in the coming years..
I guess we really need “batman to save us from this joker” :)
@ Anthony – Excuse me but why do you hope they will do the same again? Don’t you think that our country needs a good opposition, a good alternative to this government? Why would you want more of the same? Ah I think I get it. It’s because you don’t really care about this country, but you only care that your beloved party is in government. We hope that labour will learn not for their own sake but for the sake of our country in order to have a good opposition and a good alternative to the present government so that if we don’t like the way this government is functioning we can vote them out of power.
@Malcom
Well said.
@M
No matter what Alfred Sant says it is MUCH easier to win an election from opposition, especially if the government has been there 10 years or more. That Gonzi won the election after the nationalists have been there 10 years is yet another credit to him, no matter how small the difference between the parties.
@Squeeker – oh my God! King Arthur and the Square Knights of the Round Table! What memories – except that we got to watch them a whole lot later than 1966 in Malta (I was still in nappies then). I’d forgotten all about this- thougb I do remember the Banana Splits, the Monkees (the pop group; they also had a children’s show), Rolf Harris, and Sesame Street.
As for the authors of the ‘why we lost’ report – I somehow think you mean Godfrey Pirotta and not Joseph Pirotta. Joseph Pirotta is one of the Labour Party’s favourite hate figures because he campaigned for EU membership.
@David Buttigieg – yes, this election and even the last one should have been walkovers for Labour.
It would be interesting to learn about the level of expertise (lejber translated ‘profil’) of the authors of the report. To me they all seem staunch labourites and all spoke in favour of MLP in recent years, so their conclusions will unwittingly include a great amount of bias.
A far cry from the independent report we were all promised and from what one would really presume. Anywhere else in the world, such analysis reports are typically prepared by an independent group of experts that do not have any interests with the organisation in question.
What’s so wrong with the issuing of a report? First you call the Labour Party closed when they refuse to allow all paid up party members to vote and now you’re sneering at them coz they decided to be open and democratic by publishing the electoral report.
And about the walkovers, is the country really doing so badly that Labour supposedly had an easy win in 2003 and 2008?
Carmen Sammut is a lecturer at University and has never been accused of any political bias.
Gerald, let’s say she has no bias, what about the rest???
I think it is good that the report is out and I guess everyone agrees with that. What we are discussing is how good the report will turn out to be. Why MLP lost the elections and because of whom is pretty obvious. The problem is that if the report happens to ommit any of the obvious facts then I guess publishing it will end up doing more harm than good, because it would be obvious to everyone that the party doesn’t really want to listen to what the majoity of the electorate wants, but keep satisfying those incompentents that live off the party.
Squeeker – It WOULD have to be written by a load of “DRs”, wouldn’t it? Otherwise it might fail to impress those of lesser intellectual capabilities… :)
Hey, Gerald! Welcome back! I bet you were waiting for us to mention you, to see if you were missed :)
Meerkat / amrio / MikeC take note …
I respect Carmen Sammut’s judgement. She is in fact one of the few people with the expertise to research and write a report like this. I certainly hope it’s true she’s involved.
don’t forget the other excuse for losing. The time extension when we all went to the polls.
Thanks Amanda, I have been posting though :)
Another interesting analysis of Labour’s defeat has been penned by Michael Briguglio of Zminijietna, the leftist group on its journal. I will be reproducing excerpts of it here.
@DCG
Yes I would wish to have Carmen Sammut categoric assurance that the report published is the same as the one she signed for without any editing or censorship.
@Gerald
May I join other bloggers’ and DCG’s to welcome you back. Meerkat missed you… on the other hand she is also not with us too often these days….
And if anyone of you was wondering, I am only having a quick look at this blog in the evenings as I cannot watch and participate in my break times at work.
Our work firewall is blocking this site as ‘inappropriate’. Mod, please note – my IT Security guy is telling me that your site must have some malformed processes (or something) which are causing firewalls to block it. Don’t ask me what it means, internet stuff is not my forte…
[Moderator – That’s insane, he’s very obviously lying. CNN run their blogs on the same platform that we run this. You can get around the problem by subscribing to this blog’s feed (posts or comments) in Google Reader.]
@Gerald
Can you post the internet address of Mike Briguglio’s resume? I had (and since lost) his critique of MLP in the late 90’s and early 00’s, and I think his critique of this election would be a very good read.
@Mod
Thanks I’ll try that out.
Anyway, better that excuse than the other excuse he sometimes gives me – that a site I want to view but can’t contains porn…
@Mod
It’s me again!
I have subscribed to the RSS feeds in Google Reader, and the 1st comment I found was this:
http://daphnecaruanagalizia.com/?p=415#comment-13276
It shows as an RSS feed but not in the blog….
[Moderator – Very ominous. Besides that, it seems Google takes a while to update the feed.]
Hey Gerald, welcome back…I missed you, not as much as amrio misses me, xi hlew.
Gerald – So did I hit the nail on the head yesterday (that you are “Jennifer Attard”, I mean)? You say that you “have been posting, though”, so unless I missed your name, you must have been using a different one, right? Hmmm…
Amanda … What the heck are you barking about?
You silly lot : how can you judge what is not yet made public! You are to have a big surprise! DCG and all the rest are to eat all you said!
Be a bit patient. I can reveal that the report is to prove most of you very wrong!
[Moderator – Phwooooosh! Exit stage left in a burst of smoke and mirrors.]
@Amanda Mallia – no, Jennifer Attard isn’t Gerald. Hallih miskin.
[Moderator – On this blog, Jennifer Attard/Peter Muscat/Omar Bezzina are all the same person. Quite funny.]
I’m not Jennifer Attard. Ejja try harder :) Lemme give you a clue – two names
Thanks amrio and Meerkat :)
Regarding the analysis by MB its not online at the moment but I’ll try and copy bits of it later on today. And yes it is very good. Basically it blames the defeat on muddled and unconvincing policies and proposals, over confidence, arrogance and you can guess what – AS
amrio here goes:
Ragunijiet ghat Telfa (Michael Briguglio)
Alfred Sant
Alfred Sant ghandu bosta merti fil Partit Laburista. Naddaf lill-Partit mill-elementi vjolenti, dahhal idejat godda fil-partit u fl-ahhar elezzjoni wettaq kampanja civili u onesta. Izda fl-istess hin, taht it-tmexxija ta’ Sant intilfu bosta attivisti validi mill-Partit Laburista.
Ghall kuntrarju ta’ l-1996, Sant fl-2008 ma rnexxilux jirbah l-appogg ta’ setturi varji tal-medja indipendentu u s-socjeta civili. Irrispettivament mill-verita’, bosta votanti baqghu bl-ideja li ma tistax tafdah u li hu kontra l-Unjoni Ewropeja.
Fuq kollox, f’ghajnejn diversi Maltin, Sant deher nieqes mill-karizma ta’ l-avversarju ewlieni tieghu Lawrence Gonzi u deher ukoll inkonsistenti minhabba u-turns f’kwistjonijiet varji. Jidher ukoll li Sant ma kellux backing professjonali u sofistikat tajjeb daqs dak li kellu Lawrence Gonzi.
Next post will follow shortly dealing with ‘Il-Klassi tal-Haddiema’
Il-Klassi tal-Haddiema
Il_Partit Laburista ghamel sew li enfasizza kwistjonijiet bhall-gholi tal-hajja, il-housing u x-xoghol prekarju, liema kwistjonijiet jolqtu fil-laham il-haj lill-bosta haddiema. Fl-istess hin izda, il-Partit Laburista ma kienx car fil-proposta tieghu tas-surcharge u l-proposta dwar it-tnehhija tat-taxxi fuq is-sahra qajmet bosta dubbji, inkluz fost haddiema li jappogjaw lill Partit Nazzjonalista.
Jidher b’mod car li l-Partit Laburista jgawdi l-akbar appogg mill-klassi tal-haddiema, izda fl-istess hin il-Partit ghandu jifhem ahjar li fi hdan din il-klassi hemm gruppi u kategoriji differenti li mhux bilfors ghandom l-istess kundizzjonijiet ta’ xoghol jew aspirazzjonijiet. U mhux il-haddiema kollha jidentifikaw mal General Workers Union minkejja x-xoghol kbir u ammirevoli li taghmel din il-unjon mal klassi tal-haddiema.
Nxt post: ‘Il Klassi tan-Nofs’
@ Jennifer Attard
What surprises could this ‘report’ contain? The fact that it exists is enough surprise for me…
Forsi s-sorpriza qeghda fil-fatt illi l-Partit Laburista ser jammetti li tilef? (ghat-tielet darba konsekuttiva?
Jew li Anglu Bellu ma sabx provi li nxtraw il-voti.
Shock Shock Horror.
And then we all know that there are ‘official’ reports that are made available to the public and then there are the actual reports.