The Nationalist Party has a team of new officials. Paul Borg Olivier is the party’s new secretary general. His task is an unenviable one. He takes over from Joe Saliba who has established for himself a brilliant track record of securing a positive vote in favour of Malta’s joining the European Union and two successive electoral victories. He also bequeaths to the party a brand new Dar Centrali, a modern infrastructure in particular with regard to the party’s media, as well as a renewed party, not least at the level of its own leadership.

That apart, the new secretary general faces a number of incredible challenges. How can the party reorganise itself especially at its grassroots to ensure an effective and renewed presence in every town and locality? What is necessary to convey a credible and convincing message through its media in an age where scepticism in political tools is bound to increase? How do we manage to keep the upper hand with the younger generation as the party brilliantly succeeded to do in the last general election?

How do we reach out to all of civil society over the coming years? How will we be interfacing with the new leadership of the Labour Party? How do we ensure that as a party in government, we deliver on the promises made to the electorate in order to approach our next national examination in five years’ time with a reasonable prospect of succeeding again, not merely for our own sake but to offer the better vision and options for the entire nation?

In a message which Paul sent to all members of the party’s executive committee before the Friday meeting, he explained that his mission is to work towards credible, constructive and collective politics. It is an appropriate message backed by an unequivocal sense of commitment – he is resigning from his post of mayor of

Valletta and renouncing to participate as a candidate for election to the House of Representatives. That means renouncing to his personal ambitions in favour of working solely for the party and through the party in favour of the country as a whole.

I wish Paul together with the rest of the party leadership team the very best. God speed as he sails out on a journey of hard work, commitment and determination over the coming years.

He deserves no less than a united crew on board, as he sails out in the right direction towards reaching the challenging targets that he has set out for himself.

As Paul appreciates, in politics it can never be a question of renewal on its own without equally remembering and giving value to what we have been through and achieved together at a party and national level. Renewing without remembering would be a negation of our own identity.

I made that point as emphatically as I could at the party’s last general council. In my speech to party councillors, I observed that as a party that is proud of its Christian Democratic credentials, we need to refer to no other authority on this subject than that provided to us by the late and beloved Pope John Paul II.

One of his leading publications that forms part of his political (the adjective is intended) testament to all of humanity is appropriately entitled Memory and Identity – Conversations at the Dawn of a Millennium.

In that book, p. 144, the Holy Father recalls that in 1994, at Castel Gandolfo a symposium was held on the theme of the identity of European societies (Identity in Change). In John Paul II’s own words, “At the beginning of the symposium, Paul Ricoeur spoke of remembering and forgetting as two important and mutually opposed forces that operate in human and social history. Memory is the faculty which models the identity of human beings at both a personal and a collective level. In fact, it is through memory that our sense of identity forms and defines itself in the personal psyche... (memory) allows man to understand himself deeply, within the definitive perspective of his humanity... Finally, it allows him to understand the history of language and culture, the history of all that is true, good and beautiful.”

The thought about giving equal importance to renewing and remembering came back to me as the party correctly included the launch of a book that recalls the history of our Dar Centrali precisely as one of the celebrations to mark the opening of the new building. Symbolically the architectural point has been made that it is the old door that ushers us into the new building. That apart, it is the collective memory of the sacrifices we had to go through, and remaining in the process utterly faithful to the fundamental values – not least that of looking upon politics as a way of being of service to others – that distinguish us in our political work and that provide the true meaning behind inaugurating a new Dar Centrali or behind appointing a relatively new team of party officials to see together with the rest of us to the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead.

Francis Zammit Dimech is a Nationalist MP