Although the Nationalist Party has achieved three successive general election victories, the party must not become complacent and must continually strive to renew itself if it is to emerge victorious again in five years’ time, PN secretary general Joe Saliba yesterday told the party’s first general council since the 8 March poll.

Mr Saliba himself will step down at the party’s next general council, when a new secretary general is elected. Speaking yesterday, he underlined how the next council will be electing new party officials, which, he said, would translate into new energy for the party and, by default, the whole of the Maltese population.

While it was good to relish the electoral victory, Mr Saliba said the party also needs to be looking ahead to the next five years and the next election from now if it is to claim a fourth consecutive win at the polls.

Providing a brief analysis of the electoral results, Mr Saliba recalled how, five years ago, the party had won both an EU accession referendum and a general election that followed hot on the latter’s heels. The defeat at the European Parliament polls, however, came as a “shock” and was viewed as a “historic injustice” after achieving membership.

The next five years, he said, had seen the government enacting a series of reforms fostering economic growth, sound public finances and securing Malta’s eurozone entry.

With euro adoption being a highly sensitive issue, and one that no EU government has emerged from unscathed, Mr Saliba remarked how, “It took a lot of guts to hold a general election campaign right after euro adoption”.

Mr Saliba also candidly addressed the issue of how the PN has lost each and every local council election in the last five years, but remarked how the losses had not had a snowball effect on the general election.

“People use the local council elections as a protest vote,” he said. “People are intelligent and see the difference between local councils and general elections.”

When it came to the general election, he added, the MLP tried to use the people’s desire for change to its advantage, but when the electorate looked to the MLP for the sought after change, they saw nothing on offer.

The MLP, he said, likes to refer to the PN as “serial losers”, when, in fact, the PN is a “serial winner” – winning general election after election after election.

“The MLP lost the election because it thought and projected that it had already won. It had not learned from its previous defeats, and the MLP media ran the same campaign and the same propaganda as it did in past campaigns.” As a result, he said, the MLP lost everything - from the election to its very principles.

The PN, on the other hand, won the election because it was of the opinion that it would lose.

“We did not say from before that we would win the election, as the MLP did. Instead, our mentality throughout was that every vote counted and was precious, and that we had to fight to the very end.

“We won the election because we wanted to continue to serve the country, while the MLP simply wanted to govern. The MLP was the “No” party, the PN was the “Yes” party, the MLP was the “No Deal” party, PN was the “Deal” party.

“We wanted one coalition, and one coalition only – a coalition with the whole of the Maltese and Gozitan people.

“But,” he added to an overwhelming round of applause and standing ovation, “more than anything else, we won because of the dynamism showed by Lawrence Gonzi during the campaign.”

Remarking how the MLP itself was holding an extraordinary general conference last night to see how it would go about electing its next leader, he observed how the opposition was obviously still in a state of confusion.

“The first change the MLP needs,” he said, “is not a change of face but rather a change of attitude.”

Also addressing yesterday’s general council, Deputy PN leader Tonio Borg observed how although the last electoral victory was a slim one, it was nevertheless one of the best, considering that no party in Malta had ever won three consecutive general elections. The PN, he said, had also won six of the last seven general elections.

The past electoral campaign, he said, also brought out the clear contrast between the PN’s positive, forward-looking and concrete campaign, and the MLP’s campaign of sowing doubt.

The MLP had also demonstrated a great deal of unwarranted arrogance, he said, by having believed an MLP victory would have been a foregone conclusion, and the electorate grew tired of hearing how the MLP would win the elections hands down.

“The PN,” he said, “never thought victory was in the bag.”

Looking forward, he said, the party needed to start working now for the next election, observing how it was 21 years ago to the day that the PN won a general election, that of 1987, after having been in opposition for 16 years.

Dr Borg also remarked – on the eve of the reconvening of Parliament after the election – that the government was ready to change the way Parliament functioned should it not reach a deal with the opposition on Parliamentary pairing – so that the mandate given by the people could be fulfilled in its entirety.

Parliament, he said, should also be more open to public scrutiny so citizens could “see with their own eyes how democracy in Malta works”.

Closing his address, Dr Borg commented that attendants should leave the council with a clear picture of where the party was headed.

“We should all be proud to form part of the party that has always been on the right side,” he added, “and which has always represented the aspirations of the Maltese people.”

The general council will be closed by Prime Minister and Nationalist Party Leader Lawrence Gonzi tomorrow.