Nationalist Party deputy leader Tonio Borg warned last night’s party General Council against electoral complacency, and stressed that a detailed analysis of the party’s electoral result should begin immediately.

“We cannot remain complacent after having won three consecutive elections, that would be the biggest mistake we could make,” he told attendants at last night’s session, the first of the two-day event that wraps up tomorrow.

Referring to last night’s executive council election, Dr Borg observed how the coming weeks and months would see new elements being injected into the party.

He also paid tribute to the PN’s soon outgoing secretary general Joe Saliba, who himself is due to step down and be replaced within the time frame, and thanked him for a decade of sterling service to the party.

Such new elements, he said, would capitalise and benefit from the party’s experience, but bring their energy and enthusiasm to move the party forward through what he described as new and interesting times.

The fact that there had been 39 nominations for 13 seats on the party’s executive council, Dr Borg observed, was a positive sign and boded well for the party’s future.

Apart from instilling new blood into the party’s structures, Dr Borg advised that the coming months will need to see the party assessing what it could have done better in the last electoral campaign.

The PN, he said, held a number of advantages, including the fact that the electorate has chosen the party for the third time running.

Another advantage was that in the last election the people had sent the government a message, “and we will address that message”.

Dr Borg cited that at the 8 March polls there had been a transfer of votes from the Malta Labour Party to the Nationalist Party. The sway, he said, had fortunately been offset by the new voters coming into the electoral equation.

This shift in voting trends, he said, would also be placed under scrutiny by the party and addressed.

Remarking on the current MLP leadership race, Dr Borg remarked that the last week had been “impressive” in its poisonous campaigning.

Turning to opposition leader Alfred Sant’s 11 May parliamentary address, Dr Borg said it was remarkable how Dr Sant had blamed everything but the party itself for its electoral defeat.

Objects of blame, he said, had included Mepa, the so-called power of incumbency, that the PN had brought in votes from Maltese living abroad. The actual truth, Dr Borg said, quoting passages from the MLP’s recent electoral analysis report, was the party itself.

The party has a contract with the people over the next five years, he said, holding a copy of the PN’s electoral manifesto aloft, observing that the new government was just three months into its five-year lifespan and that here was a lot of work ahead implementing the over 300 initiatives laid out.