Roamer's Column

As the KMB-Sant farce continues, time marches relentlessly in the direction of the Labour Party's general conference. There are fewer and fewer smiling faces as the deadline for that event draws near. The details of the contest are well-known. The names of the protagonists are as familiar.

On the left-hand side of the ring, Dr Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici, eager to deliver the upper-cut that will floor his opponent; on the right, Dr Sant weaving his way around to avoid contact with the deadly blow. The bout will reach its climax next month. When it does, will there be, as Dr Mifsud Bonnici was reported to have warned, a split? Or will it be the case that Dr Sant's control of the party machinery will have his opponent leaving the ring muttering foul play? Unless the wily but unimaginative old man can break through Dr Sant's domination of the party apparatus, the outcome will probably go against the former leader of the Malta Labour Party.

Dr Mifsud Bonnici, readers over 25 may recall, was placed arbitrarily at the head of Labour's top table by Mr Mintoff. The latter had come to the decision that the party stood a better chance of re-election in 1987 without himself as its leader, a decision many expected Dr Sant to make earlier this year. Dr Mifsud Bonnici was arbitrarily picked from outside Parliament, where the man was making the sort of nuisance of himself Mr Mintoff admired, and sat him down as Malta's prime minister. Mr Mintoff, it is safe to assume, had a strong idea of where the electoral wind was blowing.

In 1985, then, the untrained politician who had conducted the struggle over Church schools was deemed to have cut his political teeth. He had, if you will allow the switching of metaphors, earned his spurs. Dr Mifsud Bonnici turned out to be a sort of 22-month prime minister. In 1987 he lost the election, lost the next one in 1992, and resigned. Dr Sant took his place in an intra-party election, the methodology of which was to haunt Dr Sant for a number of years.

Unlike Mr Mintoff, Dr Mifsud Bonnici opted to keep out of sight and, as matters developed, out of mind. Not so his anointer, who now turned silent, if brooding, backbencher, for a while at least. The 1998 episode is known to all. As a consequence of it, Dr Sant went into some sort of political cold when most people thought he would go into retirement. Not so; he regarded the 1998 election as an exercise that had created a government, led by Dr Fenech Adami, with no legitimacy. With that sort of opening remark as Leader of the Opposition, he was electorally doomed. Add the EU issue... What Dr Mifsud Bonnici and Dr Sant have in common is that they are two failed leaders. Neither has fully recognised his accomplishment.

When Dr Sant was elected leader of his party first time round, he acknowledged early on that Dr Fenech Adami's victory in 1992 gave his government the mandate to negotiate Malta's European Union membership. For reasons I cannot recall, he switched from this position and transformed the party and himself into a God-forbid-we-ever-join-the-EU caucus.

In 1996 he became prime minister. There were seismic moments ahead. One happened in 1997 when the finance minister who appeared with Dr Sant on television selling the VAT-out shambles experienced his political Damascus. Once the parliamentary, but not political, battle over VAT's replacement by a joke was concluded, Lino Spiteri decided he could serve no more.

He was followed by Dr George Abela, whose face on the Winning Team poster added credence to Labour's campaign in 1996. Recently, another substantial figure in the shape of Alfred Mifsud was warned to stop rocking the post-election boat and knocking Dr Sant or else. He elsed. Other party were shown the door. Despite the terrible loss the party had suffered at the referendum and the general elections, both fought, essentially, on an EU membership platform, the party machinery was safely, or unsafely, depending on your point of view as a Labour politician or opinion-former, in the hands of Dr Sant.

Big Bang?

I have no time for Dr Mifsud Bonnici as a politician, still less as an economist. There are those who think his controversial stint as the controller of BICAL's assets was a disastrous episode. And his handling of the Church schools business when he showed he was not averse to a show of violence if that was necessary to win the struggle, was the most divisive element of the Eighties.

As for his sense of economic housekeeping, who would have had the drollness to drum up the absurd idea of finding no employment for 8,000 unemployed by scattering them like confetti all over the public and parastatal sector where they were not needed except to bloat both sectors even more? He saw this as a social act. Economically, it was an act of madness that had serious and adverse social consequences.

I have still less time for him as an opponent of the EU but I respect the fact that he remains opposed to the accession treaty signed between Malta and the EU in Athens earlier this year. I disagree with him but he can say, hand on heart, that there he stands, he will not budge. This is altogether different from the attitude Dr Sant has taken.

Having lost a referendum and an election on the issue, having resigned his leadership and withdrawn that resignation, his current stand has to be meaningless to Dr Mifsud Bonnici and a number of Labour supporters who agree completely with the latter's position. It is made more purposeless by Dr Sant banging on about his preference for the partnership option, which many think does not, never did, exist. The Labour Party is correct to adapt itself to the new reality. As the prime mover of the old reality, Dr Sant is surely sliding on the razor's edge of politics.

What remains to be seen, and it will not be revealed until the party's conference has met, is whether a cleavage will emerge after that conference. If it does, a split in the party may well become inevitable. Dr Mifsud Bonnici has warned delegates that a sequel along these lines is possible if his faction is not given the opportunity to express its views within the party. By this we must infer that the man is finding it difficult to chat up the Euro-haters/sceptics, having obstacles placed in his path to prevent him from bringing about a caucus that may present dangers to the leadership on the night. This was confirmed during his appearance with Mr Mintoff on Joe Grima Live when he also denied he had said anything about a split.

Dr Sant realises full well the dangers ahead, which is why he has been concentrating on keeping control of the party machinery. He seems to be succeeding. Why else would Dr Mifsud Bonnici be referring to a faction clamouring for space when initially he had claimed he had the support of the majority of delegates; at least of the delegates to whom he had spoken on the matter?

November is going to be an interesting month. Not only is there the prospect of a budget that will focus on Big Things. There is the certainty that the Labour Party will be facing Even Bigger Things as some of them cast their minds back in history and recall that it was exactly 54 years to the month that a certain Dom Mintoff was elected leader of the Labour Party having 'dethroned' Dr Paul Boffa, as Edgar Mizzi describes the act in his eyewitness account of Malta in the Making.

The terrible twins

What a couple they made on Joe Grima Live! If Malta's post-1987 generations wished to have some idea of what being led by these two men was like for those who were not supporters of the socialist government, they should not have missed the programme. They will have been unaware, in all probability, of the irony that Mr Grima was a Cabinet minister in Mr Mintoff's government. It was not lost on Mr Mintoff who, tongue in cheek, did ask Mr Grima whether he had not once been a Labour man. "I was".

But there he was, Mr Mintoff, his old gesticulations in place, his insistence on indulging in monologues, his anger at Dr Lino Briguglio having been given space on his programme, his shamelessly distorted recall of shameful events - the national television station's treatment of Dr Fenech Adami, who could not have his name, even, mentioned on the station, let alone his views broadcast and, therefore, the decision to broadcast to Nationalist supporters from Sicily, whither Richard Muscat had to go to perform this task - his refusal to allow space on the programme for Mr Muscat's version of that episode (and Mr Grima's agreement to this demand, but the slot appeared anyway).

How incongruous that Mr Mintoff, of all people, should whine about space, he who had painted his Cabinet and parliamentary colleagues into such limited confines outside which they dared not raise their voice; who, whether he is aware of it or not, presided over 16 years when fear stalked the streets along with his party's thugs. For those who are 30, even a little younger, that period is embedded in their psyche. Now Mr Mintoff does not have a trace of the following he once had. Most, not all, of his supporters have deserted him. Indeed, many of them will never forgive his contribution to the party's fall from power and its consignment after 22 months to the Opposition benches.

The Mintoff-Sant tangle, the VAT-No-VAT shambles, the remarkable decision of Dr Sant to turn a simple resolution on the Cottonera project into a vote of no confidence did for Dr Sant. It also did for the party, which still needs to find itself.

And where was Dr Mifsud Bonnici for most of the time, I mean during the programme? Opposite Mr Mintoff with very little time at his disposal, but enough to announce to viewers that he was not being given space by the party (about which, on his own behalf, Mr Mintoff also whinged) and to broadcast what it was he was trying to achieve within the party. One could not help feeling that the two amply deserved one another.

Leave Valletta alone

I was walking through the streets of Valletta last week. It was after eight in the evening and all was quiet; well, almost. The thousands of people who thronged Republic Street and Merchants Street during the day had left the city to its dwindling inhabitants and to the few restaurants dotted around the place. The deserted streets were like a blessing, likewise the absence of cars. One goes back a century in time.

Why, I found myself thinking, as I gazed upwards at balconies and some of the marvellously aloof buildings, why is there a clamour to bring Valletta alive at night? Even the Opera House, gutted but still standing on an architectural leg or two gave out a serene signal. I distinctly heard the stones say: "Leave me alone. Let me rest in peace. That place in Theatre Street is doing fine. So is the one round the corner. You really do not need me. Remember me as I was. Place a huge in memoriam picture of me where I once entertained. Just tidy me up a little. Light up the ruins - and if you can, empty what used to be the auditorium off cars. Create a square out of it, with fountains and a garden. Fountains, in the plural, mind you, or if you insist on only one, make it a work of baroque. Baroque and the sound of water. People sitting at Pjazza Trovatore, better still, Pjazza Melchior Gafà, whatever, can then really enjoy me in death. You can even have open-air concerts. So much easier and less expensive than what has been touted so far. I could look beautiful in a commemorative sort of way."

And what, I shuddered to think, as I came out of my reverie, what would 'alive' come to mean? How would a Paceville aliveness improve the city's graciousness? I know, I know. It does not have to be a replica of that. But the more I thought about it the more I wished to see Valletta left alone, its present appalling entrance replaced with Richard England's idea and the bus terminus similarly transformed into a park, anything but the fume-filled killing field the place is today.

The best we can do for Valletta is remove the scars visited upon it by all those cables and wires, by undesirable advertising neon signs, unkempt roads and shop fronts that jar, continue with the stupendous restoration work being carried out, eliminate all dowdiness and draw visitors to the place with cinemas, theatre, open-air concerts, good restaurants and the uniqueness of its architecture.

The ghastly Freedom Square is something else again.

Some truths, indeed

About PBS, I mean. If you have not already done so, take a look at last Wednesday's The Times and read Tony Mallia's contribution. In it we learn that in 1995 "the station was shackled with debts and problems... no water, electricity and telephone bills had been paid... a loan of Lm1.8 million... to buy new and modern equipment; instead... it was spent on... Giochi senza frontiere... the loan is still a millstone around PBS's neck... (it) has already cost PBS about Lm900,000 in interests and not a cent has been paid... in late 1997... the number of executives and managers (was raised) to 30 with an annual salary of about Lm10,000 each... A number of executives and managers could not even carry out a simple budget exercise..."

The figure for the number of chiefs - it runs at one for every nine people, let's say ten - is mind-boggling. What should have been a recipe for an unbeatable organisation turned out to be a formula for disaster. There are many more truths expressed by an ex-chief executive who found himself "unceremoniously removed for no reason from PBS in November 1996", a few days after the Labour government was returned to power. They are all ugly. They are what made PBS the station it is today.