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The Maltese Herald

The new front of Joseph Muscat’s faction in the Labour Party: Alex Agius Saliba

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by

Mark Camilleri
in

Ever since Robert Abela and Joseph Muscat fell-out and Robert Abela told Joseph Muscat to “go fuck himself”, there is a new front for Joseph Muscart’s faction in the Labour Party and it’s of course, Alex Agius Saliba. It was Alex Agius Saliba who platformed Joseph Muscat in a campaign meeting so that he could cry crocodile tears over his imminent arraignment in court, and Joseph Muscat is of course helping Alex Agius Saliba with his campaign.

If Chris Fearne gets accepted as EU Commissioner, a vacancy for Labour Party Deputy-Labour will be available. Alex Agius Saliba will be contesting such vacancy with the backing of Joseph Muscat. Given that it will be only the delegates who will be voting for the Deputy-Leader, and not the members, Alex Agius Saliba has no chance of winning the post. Many of the delegates are hardcore socialists and Mintoffians who will never accept the return of Joseph Muscat or his allies in the leadership of the Labour Party. The problem is with the members who get to vote for the Leader.

However, even if Alex Agius Saliba has little chance of garnering enough support from the delegates to win the race, the Labour Party should not sit out this risk. It is now before tomorrow that the Labour Party has to start a covert or overt campaign to discredit Joseph Muscat and his allies.

As Joseph Muscat rides through Malta’s roads with his Maserati, it has become very easy to discredit him. Joseph Muscat is no longer a man of the people: he is corrupt and a man of the “elite”. The Labour Party should hammer this out, day after the day with vicious propaganda. The Labour Party should also stress that it was Joseph Muscat who filled the Labour Party with corrupt and opportunistic Nationalist Party MPs and activists and action should be taken to remedy this situation to discredit Joseph Muscat in the process. One of the first actions that Labour should do is to discredit Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando as a corrupt opportunist, fire him from his public posts, and blame Joseph Muscat for his presence in Labour and the government. Jeffrey Pullicino has been involved in several insider trading deals during Joseph Muscat’s administrations, including a deal in Cottonera relating to the new university, so it’s very easy to smear and discredit him.

Anyone defending or supporting Joseph Muscat should be treated like toxic waste. If the Labour Party doesn’t take this posture, it will risk, once again, to become sabotaged and controlled by Joseph Muscat and his allies.

Comments

12 responses to “The new front of Joseph Muscat’s faction in the Labour Party: Alex Agius Saliba”

  1. Truthseeker avatar
    Truthseeker

    Hi Mark. Excellent article, however, if I’m not mistaken, the upcoming deputy leadership contest in the Labour Party may only be contested by sitting MPs in the Maltese parliament. Correct me if Im wrong.

    Reply
    1. Banquo avatar
      Banquo

      Not sure who is contesting what but, generally speaking, any political party position can be contested by anybody a party chooses to accept as a candidate, even, for example, somebody who is not a Maltese citizen.

      What you must always question when thinking about political party vs. government/opposition positions is whether a role is constitutional or not. The constitution does not need political parties.

      Members of Parliament (MPs) can, in theory, all be independent candidates. MPs who form a constitutional majority (simple or two-thirds, depending on the role), as representatives of the people, can pick a prime minister, opposition leader, speaker, president and other roles as written in law. Political parties are irrelevant to all this. Political parties are just candidates who run things together to make winning and running things easier than running alone. They do not have, per se, a constitutional role, so they can choose whoever they want without any restrictions as their leaders. In fact, the leader of a political party and the leader of that same party in government or opposition can actually be two different people.

      Unfortunately, in Malta, we often do not, or choose not to, understand the difference between political parties and government/opposition. In the previous presidential term, we had the bizarre situation of the president refusing to accept the choice of opposition leader as made by the representatives of the people sitting in opposition. George Vella was an astoundingly bad president because he was unable or unwilling to understand the basics of the constitution.

      While on the topic, it was a very retrograde step for both major political parties in Malta to delegate the choice of leader of the party to political party members. That is fine if they just want a leader among themselves (for example, if ADPD to choose a leader, obviously, it is members who must decide) but for a party that sits in parliament to choose a leader of government (prime minister) or a leader of opposition, it should be only MPs who should decide. MPs are individuals chosen by the people to represent them so they have a duty to choose and will be punished in an election if they make a ‘wrong choice’. Party members are just random (and often radicalised, fanatical folks prone to populist leaders) who choose to pay a fee to a political party and represent nobody but themselves. Who are they to choose a prime minister or an opposition leader?

      The Nationalist Party ended up with the poor choice of Adrian Delia precisely when it gave all its members the power of choosing the opposition leader, a hare-brained idea which was presented as ‘more democratic’, even though it patently wasn’t because a bunch of die-hards who are not representative of the people got to choose their guy. The same happened in the Labour Party when Robert Abela was chosen. A pragmatic and intelligent parliamentary group would have probably opted for Chris Fearne but the choice of prime minister was handed over to crazy Laburisti sal-mewt who are not accountable to anybody.

      Colonial Britain handed Malta a beautiful and logical parliamentary system which we have constantly messed with to make worse, adding random number of seats (eliminating the possibility of smaller parties ever gaining power), adding quotas (unelected and unaccountable MPs), having members of parties rather than members of parliament choose prime ministers and opposition leaders, and on and on. If it were up to me, I would take the constitution back to where it was on independence day and start over, because we have not been good at improving things. Even if there were constitutional reforms that meant well, they had unforeseen bad consequences.

      Reply
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