Leadership contest

Labour in labour is an 'independent and unauthorised blog' created by Jennifer Galea to document and discuss the contest for a new MLP leader. This entry discusses 'games contestants play':

Parallel to the canvassing by each and every one of the five contestants (Abela, Bartolo, Coleiro Preca, Falzon and Muscat) there is another activity going on, less visible to the naked eye but not less important. Most of the candidates will also be communicating with each other, mostly through intermediaries. The aim of these ‘negotiations’ is to explore various possible alliances.

There will be candidates who resort to bluff. The dynamics of the bluffing game are roughly as follows: the effectively weaker party will generally bluff and invite an effectively stronger competitor to step aside and not contest for the top job in exchange for support to win one of the two deputy leader posts. Poker players will understand this best.

There will be candidates who will appeal to a higher good than the interest of the two or three individuals in the round of negotiations. The higher good is the Party and an even higher one is the Country. The argument goes like this: let’s go the delegates as a team and thus avoid unnecessary internal strife. This is a variant on the ’show of unity’ theme. In any case, it requires one or two of the contestants to give way to another competitor and to refrain from contesting for the top post. It also requires those candidates that are not party of the agreement, to be excluded from the leadership...

Labour Uncovered is another blog discussing the MLP leadership contest