George Three Times

The Malta Independent - Friday Wisdom

The PN media is making brouhaha about a reported incident where Dr George Vella, former Deputy Leader of the Malta Labour Party and current Opposition spokesman on EU matters, was supposedly instigated by some party officials to contest the leadership of Dr Alfred Sant who is often perceived as the PN’s best asset and the last remaining barrier between the MLP and the next government.

In the absence of an official denial one surmises that there is substance in the story even though one should be neither scandalized nor surprised about it. A political leader that cannot execute a democratic political mandate and then loses two consecutive elections is certainly liable to being challenged. The essence of democracy demands it. It is the duty of those whose loyalty is to the party and not to individuals, to challenge anything that stands between the party and its ultimate objective of operating from government.

So I would be more surprised if such efforts to achieve a leadership change within the MLP before next election are not made rather than at their being made. Speaking from experience I was out-rightly critical of the way Dr Alfred Sant achieved his fourth leadership mandate following the disgraceful election defeat of 2003. As a true laborite I considered it my duty, after exhausting all possibility of using internal channels of persuasion, to expose the illogic of electing the incumbent leader before delegates were given the faculty to study the analytical report of the 2003 election defeat which at the time of leadership elections in May 2003 had not yet even been commissioned.

I had made reproaches to the incumbent leader and the general secretary, urging them to postpone the leadership elections till the analytical report is prepared. All I got was a legalistic reply that all was being done according to statute. According to the word of the statute may be, but certainly not according to the spirit of the statute and definitely not according to most basic standards of simple logic that it did not make sense to confirm an incumbent leader for the next five years when the voting delegates were not illuminated as to who was to carry the blame for the electoral disaster just suffered. Does one need a statute to understand that the cart cannot be put before the horse?

When I had exhausted all hope of convincing the incumbent leader to postpone the elections and when it became clear that he had engineered an abuse of party resources to whip up emotions in his favour between 14^th April 2003 and 1^st May 2003, then in the interest of the party I decided to make one final approach.

I phoned Dr George Vella and urged him, almost pleaded with him, that in the interest of the MLP he should contest the leadership election making it clear that he would be an interim leader for a 12 month period until the party could analyze the why’s and wherefores of the 2003 electoral defeat and then proceed to choose a new leader calmly and on a properly informed basis, away from the confusion and the pain of the disaster just suffered; a time when logical cool heads would prevail over hot emotions.

I argued with Dr Vella that as he was the only person who could carry credibility for such a proposal, having already refused the leadership offered to him on a silver platter by Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici following the electoral defeat of 1992, he had a moral duty to stand as an interim leader to ensure that the party would not be constrained to face yet another election with the disadvantage of a failed leader.

In those early days of May 2003 Dr George Vella like me had the bad taste of the ultra-unorthodox way Dr Sant behaved until he announced his leadership bid on 1^st May 2003, and saw the logic of my suggestion. However, whilst promising to think about it, his immediate reaction was that he was more inclined towards lowering his political profile rather than raising it, as he had promised to make space for others in case of an electoral defeat. He also added that Alfred Sant had made a similar gentleman’s agreement with him and therefore he was amazed and puzzled by the roundabout turn just executed by Dr Sant in public view in Freedom Square on that 1^st May 2003.

Obviously Dr Vella did not contest leadership and the rest is history. I was forced to resign from the MLP early the following September purely because I had the courage to challenge and question openly the irregularity that was committed in electing a leader before analyzing the reasons for the second consecutive general election disaster.

Whilst it still hurts inside, at least I can hold my head high feeling I did all I could to make the party electable, as well as to remain loyal to the organization and its principles and not to individuals who abuse their temporary authority by putting their own interest before that of the organization. In my limited way I did my bit for the party.

Dr Vella refused three times to make his bit for the party. He refused KMB’s leadership offer in 1992. He refused my suggestion to contest as interim leader in 2003. And more recently he seems to have refused suggestions to challenge again for leadership, whether permanent or interim not yet clear.

On each of these three occasions Dr Vella has failed the party. Failed it for not accepting to lead it. And failed it again for attempting de facto to lead it when he had officially refused to lead it. Because there are clear indications that Dr Sant is overawed by Dr. Vella and gives in to his demands even when all else beg to differ. May be Dr Sant feels he owes his leadership to Dr Vella in refusing it three times when it was clearly within his reach or for coming to Sant’s rescue whenever his leadership appeared doomed.

In January 2003 the whole corpse of Labour’s national executive had counseled Dr Sant to accept the PM’s offer for a binding referendum on EU membership provided the referendum was preceded by a general election. Dr Sant eventually unilaterally conditioned this simple logic by a farcical 60% level of approval in the referendum. It is widely believed that this was done to appease Dr Vella who was not present at the meeting of the national executive and could not judge its mood. Unfortunately for Labour it seems that Dr Vella’s tragic view, that EU membership needed changes to entrenched clauses in the constitution and hence why a 60% approval in the referendum was required, prevailed over everybody else’s. The general election was lost in January not in April 2003.

No one will ever have the privilege of being offered to lead Labour three times. George Vella has had this unique privilege but has not used it properly. He carries the guilt of constraining Labour to face the next election without the necessary credibility that old faces cannot give to new policies.