When I visited Canada a couple of years ago in summer, I was walking through a particular town and noticed long red and white striped poles lying along either side of the road. Perplexed, I asked my hosts what the purpose of those poles was. They told me that in the winter months it snowed so heavily that the natural boundaries of the road were lost under metres of snow. When that happened, they needed the poles to be able to find out where the boundaries of the road were and therefore orient themselves appropriately. I think that the present situation in the Nationalist Party (PN) needs some similar poles by which to orient itself. Sometimes, as a committed member, I feel that the party is itself in a situation similar to a court-room drama with the opposing members being lawyers with inflatable egos belonging to different legal firms and slogging it out among themselves as to who is right and who is wrong while we ordinary folk look on in bewilderment.
Like the road poles in Canada, it is time for all members of the PN especially the MPs to look ahead and move on together for all our sake. What are the political marking poles that we should all be looking for? Some are the fruit of reason while others are the fruit of values. The PN, as a party belonging to the EPP group, has a number of values and principles that are inspired by Christian principles. A party by no means confessional, as should be the case, but inspired by values that have kept it going on as a popular party for much more than a hundred years. It would be wise to look again at some of these values and focus on them rather than the purely legalistic approach that we have witnessed so far! The PN should never become a party without values as politics without values is completely sterile and leads to a whiter shade of pale.
The first value I would like to underline is that “All properly constituted authority comes from God”. The PN election took place a year ago, but when I go to a public meeting, I confusingly find one group of PN MPs here and another group there. Dr Adrian Delia won the election fair and square and he (and his constituted administrative body) is the rightful leader of the party and all our allegiance should be given to him. Others should either put a sock in it or move away to make space for others who want to work. The party needs workers not moaners.
The second value is that “A house divided cannot stand”. This is true in everything but much more so in politics. Unless the two sides find a way of coming together, make the PN appealing to civil society, and capture the imagination of society in general, we cannot ever hope to get anywhere. Unfortunately, both sides have missed important events and moments to seek common ground and looked the other way. This must stop as unity is paramount. Politics is essentially a numbers game and we need the numbers – together!
The third value is that the party needs to underline, together, the values of an eco-social-market economy in a changing world more forcefully in order to mitigate the overt leaning of this government towards neoliberalism. In effect not enough is being done to pick on the diverse issues that this Labour government is trampling on. There is an ongoing disaster in the ecological field, a disaster in the social field and the unbridled approach to neoliberalism yet one hardly hears a squeak from certain responsible individuals in the Opposition. This does not apply to everyone, but everyone needs to do his work or please get off the bus! The real political opponent is on the other side of the house.
The fourth value stems from reason itself. Aristotle in laying down the law natural to reason came up with two important principles. The first is that one should seek that which is good and avoid that which is evil. This means we have to foster a politics with values unlike that of the present government where the only value seems to be money. Everybody has his price and then is expected to shut up. Buying everybody off seems to be this government’s prerogative. The PN should be coming up with the values in life needed to enlighten society to think about the greener pastures of fulfilment that are possible. This does not mean implementing values of a confessional nature and neither is it possible that all morality should be translated into law as this could create disorder in the very society we want to improve. Not everything that is immoral ought to be illegal but there is much that can be done in the environmental, social and economic field to have a much better moral order than the one we have today. A moral issue is one which intrinsically involves a choice between good and evil and the state ought to make space for these individual choices where it is possible and where the common good allows it. People who find themselves facing pre-moral situations also need to be respected and given their appropriate weight and space in society in line with the common good.
Aristotle’s second law of nature and our fifth value is that one should behave towards others as you would like to have them behave toward you. Free choice should not be elevated to the status of a false god! Free choice should be respected in all non-moral issues and employed in our quest and obligation to choose good over evil, but all our free choices and rights are limited by the rights and freedoms of others. Prima facie, at face value, where the rights of others begin, our rights have to give way. It is not possible to claim rights while trampling on the rights of others.
The sixth value is that we need is to radically re-found the education system for our young people to one which is flexible, interconnected and geared not only to the needs of society but also to the needs of the individuals concerned, both givers and receivers of information. Today, in our education system, the right hand does not know what the left hand is doing unfortunately, nor do they speak to each other. A more aggressive criticism of the present system and thinking up alternatives are needed. The same goes for the health field where rather than treating the patient as a single whole, we are treating them in parts, not necessarily in the right order either. There are increasing cases where the left hand gets the attention that the right foot should have had.
There are other values, but today I thought of starting with these. Make no mistake, the present Labour government has had its summer and is now rapidly moving to its autumn. People are fed up of seeing the same faces and hearing the same rhetoric and after a time seek to change administration. However, they will only risk doing so if they see a viable solid alternative government which the PN is not and has yet to become. Spring has not yet come but next summer is waiting for someone to claim it. It is not too late but we have to get our act together and move on. The past has its value but getting stuck in it is not one of them. Respect the way the present evolves and look ahead with confidence to the future. There is no other way both for a political party and for individuals in life. Life is what actually happens when we are planning things in a completely different direction, so we often have to go back to the drawing board and change tack. Together there is nothing we cannot achieve, apart from nothing we can ever achieve. The ball is in the field and the game has started, on with the play.
Dr Asciak MD M.Phil PhD.
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