I studied him for 16 years

Alfred Sant reading ...14th century Chinese poetry?

Shortly after Alfred Sant lost his third consecutive election and resigned I wrote this piece in The Times. 

As the man seems to be rearing his head again, I thought I'd invite you to revisit it.

Wednesday, May 7, 2008 , by Lou Bondì

My two Sants worth

Alfred Sant became leader of the MLP in 1992, a few months after I presented my first TV programme. For 16 years his presence in my life was bigger than it should have been for someone who is not a family member, a friend or, even more strangely, someone who insisted on being a foe.But, I confess, I was darkly fascinated by the man for over a decade and a half. Working out what made him tick became an ongoing decoding exercise, almost a labour of love - his quirks, his patient instinct for survival, his political stamina, his obstinacy, his timing, his ability to make something out of nothing, his powers of manoeuvrability, his clinician's approach to life.

Journalistically, Dr Sant was a worthy fencing partner. You underestimated him at your peril. Above all, I grappled for years with a mysterious contradiction at the centre of his political soul. Here was a man who spent most of his adult life pursuing power but every time it came within reach, particularly when it did so, he said or did something to push it away.

For me, the key to the mystery is this. Dr Sant's essence was that of a playwright, not a politician. For him, political life follows the rules of the stage not those of Parliament. And politicians are actors, himself included, not decision makers.

As MLP leader and, briefly, as Prime Minister, Dr Sant's political world was not the same one inhabited by other Maltese politicians, his own party's included. Real political issues affecting real people did not move him. It was his self-created plots, intrigues, surprising turns of events and the continuously shifting line dividing friends and enemies that did. Politics was the raw material for his real-life play. Making the lives of real people's better - the very essence of politics - did not fire him up. What did were the endless opportunities that politics offered him to write and stage a play he wrote and starred in. Sadly for the Malta Labour Party, this play became its recent history.

What did the notions of Switzerland in the Mediterranean he came up with 15 years ago, the Partnership one he minted a decade ago and Good Governance he threw in the pot this time round have in common? They were all words, verbal devices, lacking any rational connection with the political reality they were supposed to capture and provide political solutions to. They were just inventions which served Dr Sant the playwright not the people.

Over a decade and a half, Dr Sant lost some of the best minds in his party for no politically rational reason. The party deputy leaders flanking him kept falling off and replaced on a disturbingly regular basis. Political insiders and outsiders of his inner circle changed places at a staggeringly fast rate. Yet, through it all Dr Sant ploughed on, totally unperturbed. Onward to the next electoral defeat.

Why? For Dr Sant, political colleagues were just characters in his play. They had to fit into his script and had no say in determining its course. When he thought it was necessary, or circumstances dictated it, one political colleague exited stage right while another entered stage left. The play moved on to the next act, the playwright's pen leading the way.

One of the things that fazed political analysts over the years was Dr Sant's serene ability to make massive U-turns with disconcerting frequency without batting an eyelid. He removed VAT then accepted it, was against political parties contesting local council elections then changed his mind, was against EU membership and then accepted it, was against the Gozo Ministry and then in favour, and so on.

Political schizophrenia must have been the best antidote for remaining sane if you were a supporter of Dr Sant's Labour Party. Yet, the U-turns were not a problem for Dr Sant himself. For the playwright, the plot does not need to obey principles. As long as it suspends disbelief, it works.

To say that Dr Sant created a fictitious world, unhinged from the world of real political choices is not to downplay his effectiveness to remain in control. On the contrary, the fictions helped him. On a party level, the man was a master plotter and tactician.

Like a spider, he wove a web around the party with him at the centre of it. Even Dom Mintoff only managed to bring down his government but not his party leadership. Without a doubt, Dr Sant knew how to write the party act, direct it and transport its supporters where he wanted to take them. Even the PN sometimes followed his agenda. Hell, he managed to get the entire country to speak in words and phrases he coined: ħofra, ħbieb tal-ħbieb, barunijiet to name a few.

Dr Sant's biggest success in this respect was his ability to continue leading a party that was his antithesis. This man led a wildly passionate, restless, proud, populist and boisterous party while he read Goethe in original German with Wagner's brooding strings in the background. And the more elections he lost, the more they hung on to him. You have to give the man credit for pulling this stunt off for so long.

For 22 months, the playwright had a problem. His fictions helped him win the 1996 election. But the game was up as soon as he did. Reality could no longer be kept at bay - the playwright's fictions had to be tested in real life. This was the heart of Dr Sant's problem as Prime Minister. He had to decide on policies and implement them, not write and stage a play. He had to deal with real people and real issues, not characters and acts.

When Dr Sant became Prime Minister, his promise to remove VAT was no longer a good twist in a play. He had to face the ugly consequences of making it come true. Turning the mantra of freezing Malta's EU application into fact meant that the nation's life was frozen. Outside his fictitious world, Dr Sant the Prime Minister was completely lost.

This is the reason why as PM he kept taking one barmy decision after another - doubling the size of Mater Dei Hospital, introducing CET, reducing government expenditure by five per cent across the board to bring down the deficit but ended up increasing it to record levels, and so on. Dr Sant the playwright and Prime Minister had no bearings to steer the ship of state. A play does not need principles but politics do. That is why Dr Sant as Prime Minister was all over the place. To borrow a phrase from religion, when you stop believing in your political principles you don't end up believing nothing. You start to believe in everything.

Had Dr Sant become Prime Minister again a few weeks ago his government might not have collapsed after two years as his first one did a decade ago. But the root problem would have been identical. The moment the playwright's fictions - reducing the surcharge by half, not taxing overtime, re-opening the EU package, owning up to the fact that the għotja to first-time homeowners was really a loan, introducing the reception year and so on - would have come face to face with reality there would have been big trouble. Plays work at the Manoel, not at Castille.