Editorial

With the Nationalist Party in government finding itself in difficulties, often due to bad planning, or sheer arrogance, it is easy for the Labour Party to think it has a free ride to victory at the next general election. The party's "body language" suggests it is already sensing a big win and with morale in the PN down to probably the lowest level for many years, it is hard not to go along with the general feeling that, bar some exceptional circumstances, the Partit Laburista, as it wants itself to be called now, will be at the helm of the next Administration.

Even so the new party leader Joseph Muscat, is leaving nothing to chance. He wants every vote he can possibly get in order to pull his party out of the political wilderness in a convincing manner. He is doing this by trying to re-invent the party, as it were, not just by touching up the aesthetics but, also, by rebranding its mission. Not so long after ushering in what he called a new political season, he is now calling the party a progressive movement.

Dr Muscat will be selling his "vision" at the much-hyped party's annual general conference, which opens today. Will his party's supporters' buy it? Of course, they will. They will try out anything to help the party push the Nationalists out of power. However, since that is hardly likely to be enough to bring about a change of Administration, Dr Muscat is also out to get the support of the uncommitted voters.

Dr Muscat has a far better chance of ousting the Nationalists than Alfred Sant had, more so after three successive election defeats. Still, however big the chances of winning the next election are, victory is still far from being in the bag, which is why Dr Muscat is trying to reach out to those who have not made up their minds yet about Labour's credibility and its potential to govern the country better than the PN. Of course, Dr Muscat is not the only Labour leader who has promised a new political season. Just months before the last general election, his predecessor had come out with a tome of 648 pages called a Plan For A New Beginning.

One problem is that people are becoming increasingly weary of political jargon. Fewer and fewer people are today inclined to believe what political parties promise at election time. Indeed, it is the extent to which they often go to promote themselves that have greatly disenchanted voters. Dr Muscat has already managed to draw back into the party's fold those who had deserted it at the time it stuck to its disastrous anti-EU membership policy and has been frantically rebuilding bridges in an all-out effort to get every dormant Labour vote. Even Dom Mintoff, so much maligned for voting against his government on a confidence motion in Dr Sant's Administration, has, apparently, made his peace with the party leadership.

Dr Muscat wants to "unite the country, to go beyond partisan politics". Again, the country has heard such talk before. Labour gets offended when it is accused of being superficial. The general conference provides a good opportunity for the party to explain exactly what it stands for now. Uncommitted voters would not be impressed by criticism of the government. They expect a down-to-earth explanation of its "mission" - no frills, no clichés, just good reasons why the party should be looked at differently from its past.