My vote

This evening, the MLP delegates are called upon to vote on a motion to amend the Party's statute in connection with the procedure to elect the Party leader. The motion, which essentially implies that for the election of the leader it should be the Party's wider membership that is called upon to vote rather than just the Party delegates, merits consideration, and it is indeed a feather in Labour's cap that such debates can take place in the most transparent and open way possible. Such events are unheard of within the PN camp.

The way I see it, for a good analysis on the merits or otherwise of the proposal at hand, we need to move away from looking at the people behind it. Similarly, we need to move away from the here and now, and the fast approaching 5th June electoral appointment. For a proper analysis, in my view, we need to take a long-term perspective of the changes being proposed and the scenarios that could follow.

The first aspect that needs to be considered is the fact that in the modern world, we have moved away from the idea of a direct democracy and embraced the notion of a representative democracy. This is why we have elections to elect our representatives in Parliament, were we the people entrust our representatives to administrate the ship of state on our behalf. The same philosophy underlies the political structure of the MLP, were the members elect the delegates to represent them in the Party's highest organ, the General Conference. The delegates remain answerable for all their decisions to the Party members. It is thus always the members that are at the basis of any decision adopted by the General Conference.

But a more important consideration is perhaps the fact that in the event that such an amendment is implemented, the Party would be doing away with all the necessary filters and placing itself at the mercy of its adversaries. As an advocate I tend to be wary of loopholes, and if this amendment were to go through, the MLP would well and truly be creating a loophole which could be exploited by its adversaries, and this by taking advantage of the fact that as things stand, there is nothing to prevent everyone, including the most die-hard of Nationalists from becoming members of the MLP. There is no vetting process in place and quite honestly I fail to see how one can ever be devised since logically any person, of whatever background, has the right to shift political affiliations and to manifest this by joining the political grouping of his choice.

Similarly, the Party would be exposing itself to those having strong economic clout. I say this because, once the door is opened for all members to vote in such an election, there is no way one can stop a determined effort to enroll a large number of members during the year immediately preceding the general elections, with the fore knowledge that an election for the Party leader would have to be held immediately thereafter. In this way, it could be ensured that whoever is financing this operation would be in a position to influence, if not even determine the election of the Party leader. Indeed, let us not forget that to enroll 10,000 new members, said person or entity would only have to part away with less than 50,000 Euro. This might seem to be a large sum of money, but well and truly it is a pittance to those who might have an interest in keeping the MLP out of office.

There might be those who might think that this scenario is rather far fetched and that I am running away with conspiracy theories. In response, I will merely point out that such a scenario happens indeed quite frequently in many of our social clubs around the islands every time that there is a hotly disputed election for the Committee. Thus, this evening I will be voting against the motion to amend the Party statute.