The MLP is in a mess

All right, let us all just take a deep breath and take this slowly. First, a person widely considered as a possible Labour leader gets publicly warned to stop expressing his opinion! A great advert this for the new kind of tolerance practised within the Malta Labour Party. The man resigns. What must Alfred Mifsud be thinking now of a party whose position he tried to defend so faithfully before the referendum and election?

Hot on the heels of this, and as if to deflect attention from it, the party's general secretary, one of the loudest anti-EU critics, part of a party that likened the EU to the Taliban, announces he wants to stand as a candidate for the European parliament!

And then, of course, we had Sharon Ellul Bonici, the one who appeared totally distressed when the banality of her anti-EU views were laid bare in Xarabank, also telling us she will stand for the European parliament.

We have had to endure one of the worst summers ever. People have been irritable and short tempered. People who voted for EU membership as well as all the MLP diehards who did not, wanted to see Malta transformed into an EU country overnight.

In this context, do you think any of us much care about who is declaring his interest in contesting these elections, so many months before they are actually held? There are still many months to go and I hope at least that the Nationalist Party will behave with a lot more dignity than the MLP and put together a group of candidates that would represent the party and this country well, but most important of all present them as a group, as a team.

It looks as if it is free for all for the MLP. Do they not have to be approved by the party or is it just up to Jimmy Magro and Mrs Ellul Bonici to decide? This is not some school raffle we are talking about, is it?

And just why is it that the worst of the anti-Europeans from the MLP are the very same people who want to represent this country (remember this country, not only MLP voters) in the European parliament?

The MLP has a huge credibility problem and the cracks are beginning to show. A party that sought reform, a party that wants to win the next election, would have by now at least got rid of the man who single-handedly spearheaded the anti-EU campaign of the MLP. He is none other than Alfred Sant.

People around him who were simply following his leadership have been made to fade away or resign. Yet, if his own position remains intact, his policies are in tatters. To add insult to injury, we now have people like Mr Magro and Mrs Ellul Bonici who want to become our representatives in the European parliament!

It is like being pro-divorce one day and anti-divorce the next, or anti-abortion one day and pro-abortion the next, simply because popular opinion did not go their way. Do they not have any principles?

When I look at such behaviour from Labour, I truly wonder how they can ever aspire to run a country when they cannot even think of presenting as candidates people who were at least not as anti-EU as Mr Magro and Mrs Ellul Bonici. The MLP is full of decent, intelligent and fair-thinking people.

For some reason, though, the reasonable people in the MLP get sidelined. Those who were unreasonable in the referendum and election campaigns cannot be seen to be reasonable now!

The MLP is in a mess. Which is why the PN continues to win elections. Love them, hate them or feel ambivalent towards them, they are reasonable, logical and consistent.