Roamer's Column

It should not be so, but it is par for the course. When Malta's political parties hold post-election conferences, one of these is bound to be in triumphal, steeped-in optimism, the other in disconcerted, mode; one dressed up to the nines, victory writ clear, the other dolled up for a post-funeral wake, celebrating a death in boisterous fashion, the mourners anxious to make it look as if Dr Sant had not died a political death. Long live Dr Sant.

And so it was last week when Labour chose the same leader to be its new leader (next Thursday the party selects its deputy leaders, one for parliamentary affairs, the other to look after party affairs - the party machinery. No prize for guessing which is the more important post. The final line-up will tell it all.). Dr Sant received 68 per cent of the votes cast, a performance that, along with the party's recent defeats, will also come under the microscope.

The Nationalist Party's gathering should have been a humdrum get-together, a matter of choosing the party's executive council. This morning, however, Dr Fenech Adami is expected to deliver a speech that will emphasise the party's need to put the election victory behind it and start planning for the next one in 2008.

While the Labour Party celebrated its autumn of discontent, Dr Fenech Adami will today concentrate on what he called, appropriately, the New Spring during the election campaign. There will be, I am sure, a new spring in his step as he walks up to the rostrum and receives the plaudits of a grateful, admiring party.

The greatest temptation they face, their leader will tell conference, is the siren call of smugness, a state not difficult to assume when victory follows victory and the impression is created that life is one hell of a ball. And there is the danger of sameness. He will no doubt refer to new faces and call on the owners of these faces and the under-40s to infuse Parliament with their energy and enthusiasm.

Spring must come to Parliament, too, that place where, between 1971 and 1987, an attempt was made to make it difficult for flowers to bloom. And whatever the workload, he will tell his troops, they cannot afford to live in luxurious, parliamentary plateaus cut off from their grassroots, their constituents, be these Nationalist or Labour. And we, their elders, Dr Fenech Adami will remind the over-50s, will need to keep up with these young spirits or die the death in five years' time.

The terrible thing for some about April's victory is that the time for living and reliving the sheer pleasure is over, but that political phase has had its time. A new and stressful one is about to begin. Why stressful? Because now more than ever before, we have to make another qualitative jump, more qualitative even than the one made after 1987. Judgments on performance will be harsher now because the electorate of 2003, pace those who run the Maltese voter down, is a more discerning one.

Dr Fenech Adami is running on a crest far higher than any he has navigated in the past. More is expected of him because it is a time of expectation - and new realities. He, too, for all his work and responsibility, will do well to remember that contact with the electorate is vital. If there are statutory problems about his appearing on national television, he will do well to make use of his party's broadcasting station and others by appearing in well-staged programmes once every two or three months. No need for glitz and gimmick, just himself and the facts.

His pre-election gift of communications, which had youngsters looking up to him, the middle-aged happy to have him there and the elderly ready to mother this grandfather, has to be balanced by post-election similarities. As leader of his party he has a duty to keep in touch with those who voted him into power (as well as with those who did not but are curious to see how the European vision unfolds) and who will be keen and eager for such contact.

The future remains bright for the Prime Minister, but this does not mean that it will remain undimmed.

Autumnal moods

What does the return of Dr Sant, who never even stood down after the elections, mean for the Labour Party? From the Winning Team of 1996, he is the only survivor. From the Losing Team of 1998 and 2003 he is the only survivor. One member of that team, Dr George Vella, did the honourable thing and decided not to stand again. Dr Joe Brincat, outgoing deputy leader for party affairs, has decided to contest the deputy leadership for parliamentary affairs.

Once the wake is over, and it still has seven days to run before Labour's 2003-2008 leadership is in place, where does the party go from here? How does a dispirited party begin to transform itself into an election-winning entity full of life and light, confident of its place in the Maltese political scene, which it must now do its best to dominate?

Labour sympathisers and politicians entertain the curious notion that the journey forward is the sole concern of the party. Outsiders and politicians on the other side, they claim, have no business to tell them what to do next, suggest new paths, recommend new ways. This attitude is nothing but a poisoned chalice that the Labour Party drinks at its own peril. To argue that way is mid-autumn madness.

The MLP does not belong only to its supporters. It is a national institution and as such the property of the nation. Its fortunes are the fortunes of the nation; its misfortunes likewise.

An alternative government is pre-eminently the business of those who oppose it, or who disagree with its policies and what it stands for. The well-being of a country is manifestly the concern of all its citizens, who have a right and a duty to comment upon the strengths and weaknesses, the vagaries and whims of any political party that can at one time or another be made responsible for the direction in which it wishes to nudge, guide, shove, the electorate.

What, then, does the return of Dr Sant mean?

Well, first of all, I suggest that the circumstances of that return have connotations all of their own. These convey to the rest of us that the Labour parliamentary party does not have the resources from which a new leader can be plucked. They indicate that Mr Mintoff created a party that remains set in concrete. His was a party that he ran on a very short rein and no successor has managed, or even bothered, still less felt inclined, to give the party more of its head. It suited his successors to adopt a similar style of control, to create a close circle outside which no flower could bloom.

That this has remained the case was amply borne out in the run-up to last Thursday's election. During this period, it was clear that the party machinery had got its boot in first. Prior to May Day and very visibly on May Day itself, that apparatus exhibited no difficulty in churning out its own candidate. That he happened to be, just happened to be, the man who said he should assume responsibility for the good of the country (but he did not step down) was not recognised by the instruments of power. Dr Sant was persuaded that the good of the country required the very man who thought he should not be its leader.

The apparatus worked as efficiently as ever it had done during Mr Mintoff's time. And, as Peppi Azzopardi memorably put it in The Times last Tuesday, Dr Sant admitted for the first time in his life that he had made a wrong decision.

Dr Sant's return may also mean that he will take on the burdens of leadership for long enough to pluck his own choice from among the parliamentary party and, in simili modo that Mr Mintoff crowned Dr Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici, name his successor. The likeliest papabile in Dr Sant's mind is Evarist Bartolo.

Bully for Ivan

We are a long way off from being a country where political parties tolerate dissent within their ranks. The case of Ivan Bartolo, who spoke up in favour of EU membership, received short shrift from senior MLP officials. The brevity of that shrift, however, will continue to create its repercussions on the integrity of that party.

Mr Bartolo went one further. He publicly declared that he would be voting against Dr Sant's candidature for party leadership. On April 28, before he had made this declaration, the Board of Vigilance and Discipline sent him a registered letter informing him that he would not be in a position to vote at the general conference. He had been zapped of any office he held as a party member. Mr Bartolo says he received it nine days later. Whatever. The point is that he was stripped off everything that made him a genuine, if dissenting, member of the party.

This man, upon whom God knows how much pressure was brought to bear after he said he was all for Malta-in-Europe (along with nearly 150,000 other voters) was reported as asking what would happen when the Labour Party changed its position and declared itself a Europe party after all? It is a good question, one asked a couple of centuries ago by a poet-politico-philosopher I imagine. Treason? What's the reason? If it prosper none dare call it treason.

And if Mr Bartolo, what about all those who voted against Dr Sant last Thursday? What about those who ran against him for the leadership? And those within the Labour Party who voted in favour of Europe at the referendum and the general elections? There must be many thousands. Will they build a Trojan horse? To outsiders, to some insiders, too, the party seems to be heaping coals of fire upon its head.

Whatever their deficiencies, and these exist, we witnessed a vigorous, if forlorn, attempt made by Dr John Attard Montalto and Dr Anglu Farrugia to wrest the leadership from Dr Sant. They did not mince their words. The party required a change of style, of form, of leader. It had come to lack credibility. Policies were not adhered to. The party was in deep trouble. And more. It should have done for the third contestant, but in the event did not. Dr Sant remains the leader of the Labour Party. Their criticism remains valid.

But, Cheshire-grinning politicians on the front and back benches of the government, smug smilers running the Nationalist Party, beware. Again I say to you, beware.

An Achilles heel

Paradoxically, the return of Dr Sant poses the gravest problem for the government and the Nationalist Party. Perhaps the delegates who voted him back into the leadership were cleverer than we made them out to be. They may have argued, devilishly, that with Dr Sant at the helm, the temptation for the Nationalist Party and the government may be to conclude that given his penchant for losing elections, 2008 is already in the bag. If so, this will prove to be a fatal attraction.

A fortnight ago, I urged the Prime Minister to treat Castille not as a natural home but as a new residence. He must put the clock back to 1987 and embark upon the new legislature as if it were his first. His vision of Malta-in-Europe must remain undimmed but the reality calls for a sense of politics of the most acute kind.

Before the election he spoke of having what he called the civil society behind him on the road to Brussels. The challenge that confronts him now is to make sure that all those who lined up behind him in Castille before and after the elections remain firmly there. They will break ranks if he and his ministers behave in a cavalier manner. They will perform the same manoeuvre if they detect an unreadiness to listen to what they wish to convey on matters as these crop up. It was therefore good to see that Dr Fenech Adami had not forgotten this unwritten pact and that he was going through the vital process of explaining to leaders of unions, associations and federations how the government intends to move forward.

Hard as it may sound, the same approach applies to the Opposition when it is not hell-bent on political narcissism laced with nastiness. He may find that the best approach, initially anyway, will be to try getting it on to the Brussels train. Dr Fenech Adami knows there are some, maybe many in the light of the realities created by the April elections, who are eager to be on the same platform now that the train is about to leave the station.

What the government must be careful about is that if Dr Sant refuses to get on board he is not allowed to wreck the platform. Valletta-Brussels is a two-way journey and it is from Valletta that the train will receive the steam necessary to make it successfully there and back to Parliament where the European vision has to be transformed into a beneficial way of life for the electorate through greater investment inflows, proper project management, endless prettification, more controlled and decreased expenditure, and enlightened social policies commensurate with the country's wealth.

Dr Fenech Adami looks out of Castille on to a Malta that has most of its major infra- and super-structures in place. He is not starting from scratch. Improbable as it may sound, his task and that of the government is even more difficult.

Postscript

A birth - to Katja and Damian, a laid-back eight-pounder, who took his time and made it at 23.10 on Friday evening, as pert and focussed a child as you could ever hope to meet. The finger of God has written the introduction of a new chapter in the history of mankind where, we believe, each one of us is unique and irreplaceable. The story will now be taken up by Mihi.