With the benefit of hindsight

A year after the General Election of 8^th March, 2008, it is worthwhile, with the advantage of hindsight, to reflect on how it was possible for the Labour Party (PL) to suffer three electoral defeats in succession, i.e. in 1998, 2003 and 2008. One hopes that these defeats will help to avoid repeating the same mistakes and will help to ensure victory for the Labour Party at the next General Election.

I sometimes think that it would have been better for the Labour Party if it had been defeated in 1996 instead of achieving what many still regard as a surprising and unexpected victory at the polls. Let’s face it, few people expected Labour to win in 1996. The Nationalist Government of the time was not so unpopular but the fact that Labour had a new leadership team which was highly respected, as well as the Value-Added Tax controversy seem to have turned the tables, resulting in an impressive Labour victory.

The negative side of the 1996 Labour victory lies in the fact that it bred a sense of over-confidence in many Labourites. How many times did I hear people saying “we’ll beat the PN again as we did in 1996”? What many Labourites seemed to have forgotten is the fact that circumstances change and the particular political situation prevailing in all the last three General Elections was quite different from that before the 1996 General Election.

With Labour in Government, problems cropped up. The new Alfred Sant administration inherited a public finances mess and the measures it took to redress this highly undesirable situation proved to be very unpopular with the general public.

Sant also tried to introduce the noble concept of treating all citizens alike, irrespective of political colour. I think that he was a man ahead of his time. In Malta, clientelism is ingrained in the way we go about practising politics. When a particular political party is victorious at a General Election, its activists expect, almost by right, that they should be “rewarded” for their efforts. Several Labour activists were shocked that the new Prime Minister left many Nationalist sympathizers in their top posts which they held under the previous PN Government. Unfortunately, a good number of these pro-PN officials would go on to let Sant down in the twenty-two months of his administration.

Then came the clash with Dom Mintoff. By the summer of 1998, Alfred Sant was already very unpopular with several Labourites because of the clientelism issue mentioned above. “Why are we not taking care of our own people?”, many were asking. When Mintoff rebelled against his own Prime Minister and against his own political party, he found many Labourites, especially the hard-core and the more advanced in age, who quickly rallied to his cause. It was here that Alfred Sant perhaps made some mistakes which were to cost him dear. I believe that he under-estimated how popular Mintoff still was with many Labourites. Indeed, I believe that on that particular day in 1998 when he called Mintoff a “traitor”, he sealed his own political fate.

I am of the opinion that few Labourites really realized the extent of the swing towards the Nationalist Party which was swiftly taking place during the twenty-two months of the Labour administration. The extent of the PN victory in September, 1998 was a surprise to all. Could Alfred Sant have gone on governing without calling a General Election? I have my doubts about this. The situation had degenerated to such an extent that I believe that this was impossible. The Labour Party’s greatest misfortune was that, in the years after, it failed to heal the rift between Alfred Sant and Dom Mintoff, with fatal consequences for its political future for several years to come.

Then came the European Union membership debate which dominated Maltese politics right up to the 2003 General Election. Labour found itself divided over this issue since there were many Labourites who were in favour of EU membership. Perhaps Labour’s cardinal mistake was that it did not realize, until too late, the extent of the support which European Union membership enjoyed with the electorate. The result was another electoral defeat at the General Election of 2003. Should Alfred Sant have resigned as Labour Leader after this defeat? Would Labour have won in 2008 if he had done so? These questions remain open to debate. Personally, I agree that he stayed on and I am doubtful if Labour would have won in 2008 without him.

What really harmed Labour’s chances in the period after the 2003 General Election were the leakages from Labour Headquarters and the regular reports of internal squabbles in the media. The Nationalist Government was very unpopular by 2008 but, then, Labour threw away its chances of electoral victory through a serious of mistakes.

The “reception class” proposal was a colossal blunder, not because the proposal did not have its educational merits but because it provided the Nationalists with an invaluable tool to scare voters by misinforming them on this issue through labelling the “reception class” as a “repeaters’ class”. Let’s be frank, several parents were afraid of this proposed educational change, having been influenced by PN propaganda.

Over-confidence was the last nail in the Labour coffin. Many, including several opinionists like myself, thought that the Nationalist Government was so unpopular that a Labour victory at the polls could be taken for granted. We were mistaken because the PN Government of Dr Lawrence Gonzi made excellent use of its power of incumbency and exploited to the utmost the vulnerability of many Maltese voters to the fruits of clientelism. The result was a narrow victory for the PN and another defeat for Labour.

That Alfred Sant will never be Prime Minister again I’ll regret to the day I die because he was a leader of great calibre and tremendous potential. Let’s hope that his successor, Dr Joseph Muscat, will continue his outstanding performance as Labour Leader and that the Labour Party will avoid the pitfalls it fell into in the past, so that a Labour victory will be assured at the next General Election.