On Sunday morning, March 9, 2008, Labour Party carcades celebrated election victory. Labour’s bungling secretary general, Jason Micallef had declared that Labour won with a strong majority.

That afternoon, Labour’s celebrations ceased abruptly. By 5pm, TVM hinted at a PN victory. After four nail-biting hours, PN secretary general Joe Saliba confirmed victory. But Micallef still insisted, in a statement, that the parties were still neck and neck.

The PN’s victory was razor-thin. Alas, that victory was truly pyrrhic. It spelt five years of turbulence, disloyalty and treachery from within the party in the midst of a global economic crisis. It led to the relentless decline of the PN and paved the way for the hijacking of the country by “a gang that brought shame to the country”, in President George Vella’s words.

The celebratory flags still hung as dark clouds gathered. In July 2010, the treasonous Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando presented his private member’s bill on divorce legislation behind his leader’s back. He had not bothered to inform any of his party colleagues.

The subsequent PN squabbling led to a humiliating defeat for prime minister Lawrence Gonzi in the referendum of May 2011. He faced further embarrassment as he voted against the divorce bill which the majority backed.

In November 2011, Joseph Muscat’s Labour brought a no-confidence vote against transport minister Austin Gatt, over the Arriva bus debacle. The maverick Franco Debono abstained. It took the Speaker’s casting vote to spare Gatt and Gonzi.

The abrasive Debono was determined to be the thorn in Gonzi’s side. By January, he was calling publicly for Gonzi’s resignation and threatened to vote against his government.

The opportunistic opposition presented a no-confidence vote in Gonzi’s government. Debono abstained again. The Speaker’s casting vote saved Gonzi again.

In an attempt to regain his authority, Gonzi called a one-horse leadership race and won the support of 96.5 per  cent. But two dark knaves, Nationalist MPs, Pullicino Orlando and Jesmond Mugliett, had not picked up their votes. Sniping from the sidelines, Mugliett denounced the leadership election as solving nothing.

Muscat read Debono, his ex-classmate, like a book. In May 2012, Muscat presented a no-confidence vote in Carm Mifsud Bonnici. The ambitious and pretentious Debono despised Mifsud Bonnici.

The equally ambitious Muscat saw his chance to engineer the government’s collapse.

Debono’s envy and spite made him vote against Mifsud Bonnici. It was the first time in living memory that a sitting minister lost a confidence vote. Mifsud Bonnici resigned honourably. Debono’s vindictive “ħu go fik” (take that) comment reverberated disturbingly.

Muscat was ecstatic. “The prime minister’s system has imploded,” he gloated.

The exhausted and exasperated Gonzi called another confidence vote. Pullicino Orlando and Mugliett were ominously absent from Gonzi’s press conference. Gonzi won the vote as Debono was reined in.

But Debono’s reluctant support was conditional. Muscat’s plan to bring down the government had failed. But Gonzi’s torment would continue.

A month later, Muscat presented a censure motion against EU ambassador Richard Cachia Caruana, this time exploiting Pullicino Orlando’s animosity towards the ambassador.

The cyclical triumphalism of one party at the cost of near annihilation of the other is a real and present threat to our democracy- Kevin Cassar

As Labour MP George Vella viciously denounced Cachia Caruana as a “sacred cow”, Pullicino Orlando and Mugliett rushed breathlessly into the chamber minutes before the vote. The vindictive Pullicino Orlando voted with the opposition against Cachia Caruana. Mugliett abstained. Cachia Caruana resigned.

In December, Debono struck the thousandth cut that killed Gonzi. He voted against his own government. Gonzi, ever the gentleman, declared “we have served our duty to our country in years of great difficulty”.

Debono, the insufferable attention-seeker, was not content. Rubbing salt into the wound, he proclaimed: “I have the privilege and the honour of bringing an end to an oligarchy based on money, contacts and inherited titles.”

On March 9, 2013, Muscat rode to a landslide victory. Two weeks later, Debono was rewarded for his efforts. Appointed commissioner of law, his most coveted prize was being given use of the ministerial car previously used by his nemesis, Mifsud Bonnici.

Mugliett had a job created for him at Wasteserv – executive architect. His wife, Karen, was appointed director at the Malta Council for Science and Technology where Pullicino Orlando was chairman.

Pullicino Orlando was photographed inebriated standing on a bar counter the day after Labour’s election victory, leading Labour Party supporters in a chorus of abuse against Gonzi.

He was rewarded for his services with an executive chairperson role and a €60,000 pay package, despite still running his private dental clinic. He put his girlfriend and Labour poster girl, Lara Boffa, on the MCST’s payroll as his personal assistant and swiftly promoted her to Projects Officer.

Labour’s obscene remuneration for the three turncoats was just a foretaste of what a real oligarchy is.

That traumatic third term drained Gonzi’s lifeblood. Focused on avoiding his government’s collapse and steering the country through the economic crisis, Gonzi’s party suffered. Its economic meltdown left it impotent against the massive war chest of a Labour Party that had long courted big business.

As the PN’s support evaporated, it sustained another massive defeat in 2017. The precipitous departure of a demoralised Simon Busuttil opened the door to the PN’s lowest ebb.

Led by an unpopular leader, burdened with an army of skeletons in his closet, the opposition melted into oblivion. Labour seized the opportunity to pillage the country, suppress dissent and eliminate critics.

That PN’s third term led the country to its current desperate situation. With a shady government unchallenged and unrestrained by an opposition with little time left to pick up the pieces, things can only get worse.

Malta can ill afford third terms. The cyclical triumphalism of one party at the cost of near annihilation of the other is a real and present threat to our democracy.

The country’s true interests can only be served by political parties driven by incorruptible core values and freed of the dominance of the cult leader – and by the regular alternation of power.

Kevin Cassar, professor of surgery and former PN candidate