Casual Elections (Finalised)

The counting for the Casual Elections that will see twelve new Members of Parliament got underway at 8am. Labour Uncovered will keep you updated with the latest developments in these elections.

Michael Falzon – MLP (II District) : Mr. Chris Agius

Lawrence Gonzi – PN (II District) : Dr. Stephen Spiteri

Helena Dalli – MLP (III District) : Dr. Owen Bonnici

George Vella – MLP (V District) : Dr. Joseph M. Sammut

Charles Mangion – MLP (VI District) : Dr. Gavin Gulia

Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando – PN (VII District) : Mr. Philip Mifsud

Alfred Sant – MLP (VIII District) : Mr. Joe Debono Grech

Robert Arrigo – PN (IX District) : Mr. Joseph Falzon

Evarist Bartolo – MLP (X District) : Mr. Joseph Cuschieri

Dolores Cristina – PN (X District) : Dr. Michael Frendo

Tonio Borg – PN (XI District) : Mr. Charlo Bonnici

Tonio Fenech – PN (XII District) : Mr. Censu Galea

Ironic as it may seem, Dr. Gavin Gulia managed to get elected to Parliament with just a slight majority of 32 votes on Silvio Schembri the young nephew of Charles Mangion. The irony in this story is that Dr. Gulia had already declared publicly and written a letter to the National Executive and the Parliamentary Group of the MLP claiming that he had no interest in the Parliamentary seat as he wanted to contest for the post of Deputy Leader Party Affairs. There are a lot of questions that need answers here!

Getting it all wrong!

How is it that as of the last few weeks, within the Labour Party a miriad of individuals is claiming to have a ‘vision’ of what should be done, but almost none of them had the guts to express this vision with former Leader, Dr. Alfred Sant. This ‘vision’ could have saved us from losing yet another election – the third in a row! There are those that have a ’15 year vision’, then there are those that were barely seen at the CNL in the last decade (except of course to address the General Meeting in order to get some coverage) and are now preaching that they have a ‘vision’ of what the Party really needs!

Yesterday on the ‘l-orizzont’, I found an interesting article written by Gavin Gulia – a Deputy Leader for Party Affairs contestant. In his writing he is stating more than once that he has a ‘vision’ – a vision to improve the Party from this post and to ‘modernise’ the needs of this post. He starts off his article by claiming that the Labour Party is suffering from two serious set backs – youths and self-employed. Sincerely I believe that the youths factor is already misleading as this is only a perception that the Labour Party has lost the youth section of the electorate. The youths in their majority have always been behind the Labour Party – something proven by Dr. Alfred Sant more than once when he was addressing the National Executive of the Party and quoting surveys that only he and the Secretary General had at hand. Let us not forget that the majority of the youths are not university graduates or students in general but most of them are working individuals that struggle to set up a family. So there is point 1.

In a paragraph further down Dr. Gulia explains that the Party is stuck in the past with achievements that he obtained in the past. WRONG. In all the meetings with delegates that I have had the opportunity to attend, most of the delegates and members feel that the Party is not giving enough attention to the past and not, for example, organising training sessions for youths in order to teach them about the past.

In what seems to be a direct attack at all the former Deputy Leaders for Party Affairs, Dr. Gulia, once again states that the Deputy Leader must not only take care of the internal affairs of the party like ‘running behind delegates, members, the statute and the General Meetings.’ He claims that the statute must be updated to further the post of Deputy Leader. WRONG AGAIN (in my opinion of course). The Deputy Leader for Party Affairs has the duty to take care of the internal structures of the party and in no way should the post be turned into a propagandist and be the person that meets unions such as the ‘MUT, GRTU, FOI and KSU’. I sincerely believe that these things should not be done by the Deputy Leader Party Affairs but by the Leader himself. It is important to maintain a post within the party as the one of the Deputy Leader Party Affairs in order to maintain the internal structures of the party and sometimes acting as a moderator between individuals in different committees that end up arguing about different issues. The Deputy Leader Party Affairs should be responsible for the oiling of the structure which actually means sacrificing himself by pulling back as much as possible from the public eye to be loved and cheered by the delegates and members. I hope that whoever is contesting this post will be ready to sacrifice his popularity for the good of the Party like Dr. Michael Falzon – who, through his five years in the post, the Party finances have drastically improved as well as the party organisation has been kept constantly in touch with him by his famous ‘open-door policy’ to delegates and members.

Dr. Gulia is suggesting that the Deputy Leader Party Affairs should go and speak to the parents of 14-year olds to convince them vote for Labour! I think that this should have already been going on as this is the work of the Candidates for the General Elections, because if you do not do this the electorate will not vote for you and will not elect you in Parliament! I am sincerely scared that Dr. Gulia will turn this post into a post that will resemble more and more an electoral candidate and therefore will end up losing its natural function and its purpose. Already within the party it was heavily felt that it was being manouvered too heavily by the Parliamentary Group as Dr. Sant used to trust them blindly while he used to give his back to the Executive Committee, and the same can happen if the newly elected Deputy Leader for Party Affairs reasons out stuff like Dr. Gulia is doing. The Party needs a stronger internal organisation, a process already started by Dr. Michael Falzon. The Party needs an Executive Committee that is not second to the Parliamentary Group and therefore the Deputy Leader should have the least possible influence from Parliament and preferabbly never have put foot in Parliament before.

Update (2): Polling ends in Italy!

Update (2) : No Socialists will be present in both the Italian Parliament and Senate! This is a first for Italy that traditionally had a very strong socialist movement. Both the Sinistra Arcobaleno led by Fausto Bertinotti and the Partito Socialista led by Boselli did not manage to acquire the 5% margin needed to elect representatives. Therefore, as a sidenote, it is now official that Profs. Arnold Cassola has lost his seat in the Italian Parliament and that we will be surely seeing him running around here for the European Parliament elections next year!

Update (1): The coalition led by Silvio Berlusconi’s Popolo della Liberta that combines together Lega Nord and the Movimento per l’Autonomia has won the Italian Elections with nearly 46% of the votes while the coalition led by Walter Veltroni and his Partito Democratico together with Antonio Di Pietro’s Italia dei Valori has garnered 38%. The largest party in Italy is the Popolo della Liberta with 36% followed by the Partito Democratico at 34%. The biggest surprise is the third largest party in Italy being the Lega Nord with nearly 9.3% of the votes.

On another note the Sinistra Arcobaleno on which ticket we had a Maltese contestant, Profs. Arnold Cassola, fell to a very miserable 3% thus leading to the resignation of their Cashmere-Communist leader Fausto Bertinotti.

Newly elected Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi has already declared that he will soon be forming hs government which he described as ‘not being a hard thing to do’ and has already stated that he wants to govern for a whole five years, something that only he and a few others have managed to do throughout the whole Italian political history. To be completely honest he now has the numbers both in the house of representatives and the Senate to govern comfortably for five years – something that ex-PM Romano Prodi did not have. In fact the first thing Berlusconi mentioned when asked to comment following the announcement of the results is that he wants to seriously start the much needed electoral reforms.

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Earlier: Voting for the early political elections in Italy has just finished. These elections had to be called due to the fact that a party belonging to the left-leaning government decided to pull back from the coalition leaving the remaining parties in limbo.

This year’s elections had two main contenders, ex-PM and media tycoon Silvio Berlusconi (71), representing the Popolo della Liberta, and ex-Rome ‘Sindaco’ Walter Veltroni (52) representing the newly founded Partito Democratico.

The exit poll at this time shows that Berlusconi is ahead in the House of Representatives with 42% while the Pd is second with 40%. Malta also plays a part in this election as Arnold Cassola is contesting these elections with the Arcobaleno (Sinistra) ticket. His party led by Fausto Bertinotti stands at 5.5%. More exit polls will be coming out soon and we will keep you posted with regular updates.

And George is back with a bang!

Yes, you are seeing right! It’s George Abela being cheered by a sizeable number of supporters yesterday in Cospicua (Cospicua – the same place where Alfred Sant called Dom Mintoff ‘A Traitor’). I was personally invited to attend this meeting but unfortunately due to unforseen circumstances could not attend. George Abela was until yesterday finding staunch resistence inside the party (by certain sections of the delegates) that seem not to have forgiven him for telling the party what was right at the time – not going for a certain electoral defeat. Now his charm has taken over – personally speaking George is a charming man that can easily turn a disgruntled delegate into a supporter in no time through his sweet talk. He has several advantages on his side – he has experience while other younger contenders don’t, he has charisma while other don’t, he has the ability to attract floaters and the ability to be considered consistent to his beliefs (not like others that change their minds with the advancing age). One incerdible pro of George is that he is completely disassociated from Alfred Sant (as is in all respect Dr. Michael Falzon).

On the negative side he has one big disadvantage on his side – that of not having the support of the electorate (the same disadvantage held by Dr. Joseph Muscat to some extent). Therefore if the Labour Party Leadership election is to be kept in the hands of delegates and not members – George Abela will have a lack of popular support and we will maybe see the re-emergence of another ‘ZERO’ on Net News. Even though I am sure that George Abela is much more capable than the annointed KMB.

A bravo also goes to Miriam Spiteri Debono, Adrian Vassallo, Marlene Pullicino and others that in the face of strong resistence especially by the Jason Micallef faction have still put their faith in George’s hands and publicly supported him for Leadership. This shows that the Labour Party is already becoming much more democratic after-all. An immediate improvement from the final years of Alfred Sant’s Leadership.

A battle of age?

Throughout this leadership campaign one factor has been mentioned ad nauseam. Those pushing forward the candidature of Dr. Joseph Muscat pride themselves that he is young, fresh and capable. On several websites that push forward the idea of having Dr. Muscat as Leader of the MLP they also compare him to Barack Obama, the young Democratic Presidential hopeful. What they most of the time do not mention is that Barack Obama is at the moment aged 46 and not 34 (like Dr. Joseph Muscat). Incidentally 46 is the same age of Dr. Michael Falzon! Therefore we can categorise two groups in this leadership race – the young and the others (to show due respect to the young at heart).

The young being Dr. Michael Falzon and Dr. Joseph Muscat while the others are the remaining batch of candidates. What the campaigners of Dr. Muscat are getting wrong is that age generally is not the issue in politics as people won’t just vote for you because you are young. The electorate will vote for you because you are capable, intelligent and can at this stage bring real change! Therefore as far as we can see the age issue is over and done with as we sincerely hope that delegates will be choosing their leader on his ability and not on any other factor such as age and looks!

What is this?

As we stated in our ‘about us’ page we are a group of young people coming from both within the Malta Labour Party (MLP) and from its vicinity, that feel bound to give our feedback on the current Leadership race. Most of us are in our mid-20′s and coming from different academic, professional and technical backgrounds. Having spent the majority of our lifetime in a country governed by the Nationalist Party (PN) we feel that the MLP must embark on a serious soul-searching exercise in order to be a viable alternative to govern.

After three consecutive defeats (1998, 2003, 2008 ) Dr. Alfred Sant resigned from Leader of the MLP and therefore opened up the Leadership race within the Party. The first to put forward his name was Dr. Joseph Muscat (34), a Member of the European Parliament, former Education Secretary of the MLP and a recent Ph.D. graduate. Following this declaration then came Dr. Michael Falzon (46), a Member of Parliament, Deputy Leader of the Malta Labour Party and a lawyer-banker by profession.

Now the leadership race has opened up a lot and we find other names such as Evarist Bartolo, a Member of Parliament, lecturer and journalist; Dr. Marie Louise Coleiro, a Member of Paliament, former Secretary General of the Party and a Notary Public by profession; Dr. George Abela (59), former MLP Deputy Leader for Party Affairs and a lawyer by profession. Other names are being flung all over the place but only the above mentioned did make their intentions public.

It is important for this blog to try and give an objective view of the current situation inside and outside of the MLP. We will try to be as concise as possible and discuss all issues relating to this leadership contest and we would also therefore like to receive your comments in order to be able to have a healthy discussion. The Malta Labour Party has at the moment opened up itself to public scrutiny as all the contestants will have all the freedom to speak out and make their proposals and recommendations for the betterment of the party.

Let us not forget that till now the Malta Labour Party is the only alternative to the Nationalist Party but unfortunatetly the people seem not to fully trust the MLP to give it power to govern. Some people before the 2008 election claimed that the MLP would win the election by default as there was a tremendous dissatisfaction on how the PN was governing this country. The people then proved these claims wrong as the relative majority voted to retain the PN in government prefering it to a sometimes seemingly inconsistent MLP. This is the soul-searching that the MLP must undertake at the moment. The choice of Leader will heavily influence the new direction that the MLP will take and therefore will heavily dictate whether the MLP will be in government in five years time!