The story of the Mosta Labour mayor ‘censoring’ an article written by his fellow Labour councillor and deputy mayor in the local council’s own magazine epitomises all that is wrong with our electoral system and the Labour Party.

The mayor’s decision to censor the ‘offending’ article was followed by a tragic farce that aptly took place in a Greek theatre when Mosta council employees ripped out the page with the article from the magazine and blackened out a paragraph on another page.

The pages that were removed were then burnt, with the ashes becoming the remains of a burnt offering to that puerile trait in Maltese democracy.

According to a statement issued by the mayor, he had censored the Christmas edition of his council’s magazine because an article written by the deputy mayor constituted an unfair advantage to an MP from the Mosta district – this MP being the husband of the deputy mayor herself.

The article featured a series of Parliamentary Questions tabled by the deputy mayor’s husband on the physical state of several roads in Mosta.

At the risk of repeating the same argument ad nauseam, I feel that our electoral system, that has candidates of the same party competing for the same votes, should be scrapped.

It has produced unnecessary bad blood within political parties – not just Labour – and has not produced the best MPs that we could have. If one looks at the electoral systems in other EU states, one can hardly find anything similar, except in Ireland.

Our electoral system has brought about too many hassles, too many arguments, too many misunderstandings and too many ridiculous outcomes. It was originally concocted by our former colonial masters whose interest was a system that helped in their ‘divide et impera’ strategy and not to put the country’s best people to represent citizens in Parliament.

The need of a system that automatically reflects the percentage of votes garnered by each party is paramount. Whether elections will solely rely on party lists or a ‘mixed’ system where it will also be possible for popular local representatives to be elected is a moot point. The country certainly cannot afford to have MPs contesting the same district in a perpetual tug-of-war.

Considering these circumstances, I fully understand that the Mosta mayor was reluctant to allow something that implies that his council doesnot keep its equidistance from the two Labour MPs elected in the district that includes Mosta. I see the point that the deputy mayor took advantage of her position to push her husband’s popularity among Labour supporters in Mosta – which cannot but be considered as unethical.

This is typical of Labour candidates and their coteries: the ‘competition’ between candidates contesting the same district is of the ‘no-holds-barred’ type.

This type of competition does not acknowledge any ‘Queensberry rules’ and punches below the belt are not rare. Whatever game it is, it is certainly not cricket; even though the end result is a mound of ashes, literally or metaphorically!

The recent stupid tiff between a minister and a Nationalist MP regarding whether the former invited the latter to an inauguration ceremony of a new garden in Sliema confirms that these squabbles do not happen only within the Labour fold.

Other differences between Nationalist MPs and candidates do not normally make the news because rash ‘dramatic’ reactions such as that of the Mosta mayor are avoided, not because they do not exist.

Typical of old Labour, the mayor’s reaction went ridiculously over the top. His decision to ‘censor’ his own magazine and the farcical way in which this was done has damaged Labour much more than the possible damage it would have suffered had he allowed the magazine to be distributed and concurrently took corrective action privately with the editor and the deputy mayor.

His reaction was short-sighted and self-defeating: few knew of the Parliamentary Questions before the incident, and now all Malta knows about them.

Never one to shun controversies, the Mosta mayor reacted impulsively. If the deputy mayor acted childishly when she wrote an article to advance her husband’s political career, the mayor did likewise with his decision to censor the newsletter.

One wonders what sort of liaison exists between the Labour Party’s central administration and Labour-led local councils.

Did the Mosta mayor act independently on his own without consulting anyone at Labour headquarters? This is a very pertinent question as the other Labour MP elected in the district that includes Mosta is Labour deputy leader Anglu Farrugia, who is therefore technically a ‘rival’ – at a local level – of the husband of Mosta’s deputy mayor.

The deputy mayor’s promoting of her husband’s interest in Mosta’s local problems could have only been aimed to give him an advantage over Farrugia, come election day. Probably the mayor thought his action amounted to doing Farrugia a good turn; so he can hardly fall out of favour with the party’s top echelons.

The plot thickens, as always.

micfal@maltanet.net