The aftermath: a bloodbath?

The morning after the night before. The votes have been counted and the new leader declared amid scenes of jubilation. More scenes await him, culminating in an appearance on IlFosos this evening. It will be like a coronation, minus the crown.

Meanwhile, back at the Stamperija, far from the public eye, people will be closing up and leaving. Of course, today, it does not take much to leave: just close up the laptop and go.

Will there really be scenes like this?

This is a rather Lilliputian affair, magnified by the press and the controversies that enlivened a very hot summer. It’s nothing like a general election but just a contest, originally between four candidate friends which soon became bitter and angry. A fight to wrest control of the smaller of Malta’s two big parties.

Until now, the fight has been to come first, to climb to the top of the heap. The contesting candidates did speak about policies in their campaign speeches but these were rather generic and vapid. The building of the campaign blocks will start now.

Before that, the party and the new leader must start to bind the many wounds that have been opened in this torrid campaign – if they manage to do so, that is.

During the campaign, many had vouched that if their preferred candidate did not make it, they would prefer to leave the party rather than stay in a party dominated by the other candidate. Many of such comments will be discreetly wiped off and many will undoubtedly conform and remain in the party. But others will not and on that question rests what will happen to the party.

A big question regards what will happen to the MPs. Some have been quite forthright in their statements but I still do not see any leaving. For this same reason, I do not see the party splitting up.

The loser will go, subsumed into the party. What happens next depends mostly on the character of the people involved. Eddie kept Guido on and the two overcame any huge debts, lives an unsustainable lifestyle, and is surrounded by thugs and the dregs of society. Whatever happens, and whoever is elected, these two halves will continue to believe this.

At the same time, one half (metaphorically speaking) of the party supporters believe the time has come to rid the party of the ‘establishment’ who they believe caused the party two heavy defeats in a row.

No amount of honeyed words about getting the party together will remove this or make people forget it happened. As I write, I read about scuffles on the granaries apparently involving one MP. To be sure, I remember that during the election of PN leader after George Borg Olivier, there was a huge scuffle inside the PN hall and the upper front balcony collapsed and people fell on to the ground floor.

I have had a working relationship with PN employees for a long time, from the day after the burning of The Times building when they brought in-Nazzjon to be printed on our Il-Hajja printing press while they printed The Times on theirs.

Then, when I joined Standard Publications, for many years I used to take the roll of negatives from which the paper was printed and waited until the first copies rolled off the press. I remember Beninju and Joe Camilleri scrambling up the presses when on rainy or damp nights in winter the paper got snagged. Even then, the talk always consisted of grumbling against ‘those’ meaning the people in the offices.

And my friends in the newsroom to this very day fulminate against ‘those’. Some of them have now come out in favour of Adrian Delia. They are of course free to express their feelings but I believe they should have stayed aloof.

I said it before, and I will say it again – one of the most ur-