AND THEY WANTED TO RUN OUR COUNTRY

As I write this on what is effectively the first summer Saturday afternoon, the MLP National Executive will have finished discussing the report drawn up by the good men and true appointed to enquire into precisely why they lost the elections. Again. Making it a hat trick.

Handily, those of them who lack the intellectual rigour to plough through 99-odd pages of what can't have been scintillating prose, had this paper, in its actual or virtual formats, to summarise it for them. Perhaps that's why it was leaked - to save the administration bods the bother of putting together a summary. Why do the work, when you can someone to do it for you? Ask Tom Sawyer if that isn't a neat idea.

Well, here you have it, the reasons why the MLP lost the election, yet again, are:

• Recommendations of the 2003 electoral defeat report were not implemented

• Rival cliques sabotaged the party's common goal

• Campaign was disorganised, uncoordinated and too negative

• The leadership led the campaign on its own

• The party's electoral office was disorganised and ignored warnings it was given of incorrect data

• Some 7,300 former Labour-leaning voters stayed home

• Decision to extend voting by an hour favoured PN.

• Post 2003 there was a mood of "antipathy" towards the leader, which in turn resulted in an organisational setting characterised by suspicion and paranoia. I'm mortally offended. I'm not on the list. The lick-spittle media, run by the friends of friends' friends, seems to have had little or no effect on the contest. The ladies and gentlemen of the press, to give us a title that is hardly merited, for all the howls and hoots of protest about the way we blackened the name of Doctor Alfred Sant, are conspicuous by their absence, while the dear fellow himself finds himself front and centre in the spotlight. I suppose, if you wanted to stretch it, the last of the above bullet points could rope in the media, by making us responsible for the mood of antipathy towards the leader.

You could say this, even if I certainly couldn't, but could you, really?

There were as many sympathetic (sycophantic?) columnists as there were anti-pathetic (is that the opposite of sympathetic? it's a warm Saturday afternoon) ones.

In fact, Sant himself had a profoundly and pronouncedly pro-Sant pronouncement every week in this very paper and legion were the elves, little or otherwise, who mobilised themselves to preach Labour's message. A quick look at each of the reasons conveniently summarised might be interesting.

They ignored the 2003 recommendations: why? Incompetence? For sure. Overconfidence? For even surer. Who was responsible?

Inter-party rivalry: tell us something we didn't know. They're busy tearing each other apart even now, and dragging the international brotherhood of Socialism into the fray. Who was, and remains, responsible?

Disorganised and uncoordinated and negative: are they describing the campaign or the leadership? And who of the leadership are they describing? The leadership led the campaign on its own: this is the Labour Party, they're control freaks, what did you expect? And who made up the leadership?

The electoral machine was disorganised and had faulty data (and didn't even know it had faulty data): Smiler Micallef, stand up and take a bow. Who should have noticed this?

Thousands of Labour voters stayed home: why would they not have? The surprising thing is that more of them didn't - when things aren't all that bad and all you offer people is doom and gloom, why should they get off their behinds for you? Who put the campaign together? Who approved it?

Extra hour of voting favoured PN: possibly, but only because during that extra hour, the electoral machine wasn't able to get the vote out. Why was this? See above and stop trying to blame Michael Falzon.

Mood of antipathy towards the Leader: again, see above. What brought this on? In the comments section below, you can answer the questions for yourselves.

If you are a Labour elf and think the rest of us shouldn't have any fun, just write "PN butt out". On the other hand, if you are a Labour elf and think, you can't be. If you just want to blame Alfred Sant and/or Jason Micallef, write "Michael Falzon should be Leader".

If you think Michael Falzon and/or Stefan Zrinzo Azzopardi are just as responsible, just write "George Abela should be Leader" but get a reality check in the meantime.

And finally, if you think I and the other columnists are responsible for Labour losing their third election in a row, write "Thank you Bocca and the others for helping make sure that these people, who can't even run their own party, didn't get their hands on the country."

NO MORE ANALYSIS PLEASE

The only person to come out of Malta's latest in a series of Eurovision defeats with dignity was the young lady who represented Malta. She went, she clearly had fun, she partied, she put on a good show, and she took it all in the best spirit.

Not for her any profound contemplation of the reasons why her performance wasn't selected: she is part of the generation of Maltese that just knows we're as good as anyone else and we don't need validation by means of a mechanism that relies on the votes and emotions of people who do actually need such validation.

The Eastern Europeans and the other New Europeans (we're part of Old Europe, for all the efforts to hide this on the part of those who don't think/want/believe us to be) may need to boost their self-confidence and make themselves feel good about themselves by being all jingoistic and wrapping themselves in the flag at even the silliest of occasions but we don't.

Doing well in the Eurovision is not the be-all and end-all of our existence, at least not those of us who have a life. There's nothing wrong with taking part in the Contest and there's nothing wrong with wanting to do well but there's everything wrong with becoming so deathly serious about it. It's a pop-song contest, for heaven's sake, the very epitome of frippery and inconsequentiality, and it's only time to think about not taking part when it becomes anything more than that. So, please, once and for all, can we cut out all this deep discussion and sonorous pronouncements?

Let a panel of DJs from the stations that churn out pop all the time choose the next entry and send the next Morena off with an encouraging pat on the back and a "have fun, kiddo".