The most difficult challenge facing this government is not the managing of the economy.

Many seem to think the economy in recession is the hardest problem for Gonzi & Co., but it’s not. The government is on the right lines. The world is in a recession and Malta has so far escaped so much of its impact that people in this country still grumble at this and that as if there’s no storm raging outside. What would they do if they happened to be Spanish, with 17 per cent unemployment, or Irish or Latvians, facing a meltdown of the economy?

This is not to say that we are high and dry, or that there will be no problems ahead. Last week’s business breakfast organised by the PN heard predictions that even as Malta along with the rest of Europe emerges from recession, unemployment will still lag behind.

But the right macroeconomic decisions have been taken, leading to a linkage of fuel prices to their real cost, removing subsidies one by one and, above all, heavily increasing spending on education. Care must now be taken that no new subsidies with long consequences be allowed to creep in. And also to create a social net (or rather a trampoline, as was said at the business breakfast) for the most socially disadvantaged, while cleaning up the social assistance network in order to remove most traces of abuse.

Nor is the most difficult challenge facing this government the reconciling of GonziPN with the mass of PN supporters. Or, to put it bluntly, removing the dangers associated with Gonzi’s merry band of backbenchers – reshuffle or no reshuffle, commissioner or no commissioner.

Over the past days and weeks, so silently that no one seems to have noticed, there have been some significant moves in this direction and things are now not as bad as they were in the pre-MEP election nor in the wake of George Abela being chosen as President.

Premier Gonzi may seem, at times, hard-pressed, arrogant even, (and he is surrounded by some ministers who are still a byword for arrogance) but he has become nifty in his footwork, even if those around him still let him down.

He does tend to sniff the air and see in which direction the wind is blowing before ditching anybody who has become a liability and maybe this could prove to be damning deep down in his conscience. But a leader is also there to see that what needs to be done is done.

No, the most difficult challenge facing this government is how to move so that it is aligned with the country.

The country has moved on, despite everything. Obviously, this has to be substantiated by figures, social studies and the lot, but anyone can see that the young Malta, that is anyone under 30, is markedly different from those above this age, let alone those over 60.

The values held today (for there are indeed values) may not be those of old, nor maybe those espoused by some sections of society. But they are values.

The styles of living are definitely changed. People work in different occupations, move more from one job to another, move their residence as well, maybe also their country of residence – and maybe also from one marital situation to another.

There! It’s said. The “d” word. But we must not get locked in a discussion about divorce. I’m speaking about divorce – but it goes beyond that.

Let me rephrase it: the challenge facing the PN (and not just GonziPN) is coming to terms with the Malta of 2009.

There is no template for what the ruling party will be doing. It must search for the way forward through darkness, with no visible landmarks to go by.

Maybe some voices will ask why this party should do so, and betray its past? The other party is not noticeably doing anything like this. True, and that will cause it a crisis just like today’s circumstances are causing a crisis to the PN.

Nor must the PN be doing this just in terms of electoral appeal, in terms of numbers. It would be a sad finale for a party with all that history to become a marketing machine tied to the conflicting and unstable trends in a fickle population.

This is the first fundamental point to be made: many political parties have let themselves become locked in a time warp and have ended up on the waste heap of history. The PN must understand what it is there for and what its role must be in a changed Malta.

Point two: the PN must also build on what makes it (not exclusively so, of course) Maltese. It was there for Malta and the Maltese when Malta was a colony. It was there, too, in the years of fighting for independence; there too in the post-independence days and there too when Malta focused on EU and euro membership.

It must likewise be there, as an inspiration, as a driving force, in the years to come, as Malta grows and develops its role in a vastly changed world. It cannot divert its path from that which is, which will be, chosen by Maltese society. It must accompany Maltese society right through. The key word here is “inspiration”: it must lead, not follow. But leading does not mean striking out in a direction and expecting everyone to follow suit. There must be a healthy and fruitful discussion between society and the party, with the underlying basic understanding that neither part will allow the other part to break the relationship.

Other parties have been here and have floundered. Dom Mintoff wanted to modernise Malta, quickly, but he soon fell foul of the church (or was made to fall foul of it – not that he needed much pushing). The result was all the pain, the split in the Maltese psyche engendered by the politico-religious controversy of the 1960s. Nobody gained. Everybody lost.

In simple words, and what I have been heading towards all through this article, the biggest challenge facing the PN, not just GonziPN, is keeping a healthy relationship with Maltese society, even as this society drifts away from the church.

No one has the template for how this can be done, will be done. Yet I know that this is the question that, with anguish, is being internally debated not just inside the PN but also inside GonziPN.

On the one hand, the PN has always been traditionally in favour of the West, of the Christian West. Not for it the adventures of shaky relationships with Libya or with Communist dictators.

This has been a relationship that has proved to be valuable, even priceless. It has enabled the party to reflect that majority strand in the country’s psyche that goes back to the times of the Knights and even beyond. Well in the centre of Western European tradition. In Malta’s case, since Malta did not pass through the turmoil of the Reformation, nor that of the French Enlightenment, it is clear that its past history and traditions came to reflect the heyday of Counter-Reform and Baroque.

Here is where Renzo Piano’s project for Valletta becomes an icon for tomorrow’s Malta. Just as the future does not lie in the slavish re-creation of the Baroque past, of a Valletta surrounded by bastions (never used) awaiting an invasion, neither does Malta’s future lie in the slavish re-creation of the past.

At the same time, Malta today is caring about its past in ways unheard of in previous years. The ongoing restoration of St John’s and now of the Grandmasters’ Palace, the care with which the Neolithic Temples have been protected from the elements, the enthusiasm of so many young people at the Centre for Restoration, the verve (sometimes overdone) that is spontaneously exhibited in every village feast – all this, and more, shows that the Malta of the future cannot be built on a draconian break with the past. This is where Mintoff went wrong, for which we have to thank him for the uglification of the bombed Cottonera, the huge land-grabs for big unsustainable homes, the unplanned expansion of Bugibba and much more (followed by equally ugly repeats by his successors, even up today).

It would be a tragedy for Malta to forget its past and take leave of its past, or to try and build its future with no reference to the past.

Christianity is not the past for Malta. It is its present and its future. Even if many Maltese will stop going to church in the years to come, Christianity and Malta will still be inextricably linked – and not just because of the cross on its flag. For Malta, Christianity, far more than for other neighbouring countries, is constitutive.

Relations with the Church are more nuanced, of course. In the times of the Knights, some of the keenest political battles were those between the Catholic Knights and the bishops of Malta, who the Knights tried hard to ban from even living in Valletta. (Then there was also the Inquisition, to make matters worse).

Much as, in the end, the Maltese eventually became tired of the Knights and all the warp and woof of their daily lifestyles, at the time of the so-called “Uprising of the Priests”, Malta had something like 22,000 clerics. Such a huge body bred reaction and, in fact, the Uprising was not supported by the population.

Some of Malta’s key parishes – Birkirkara, Nadur, come to mind – have past histories of controversies with the bishops. The anti-clericalism that Mintoff spearheaded in the 1950s and the 1960s had been foreshadowed by that engendered by Lord Strickland in the 1930s. Both were modernisers who ran before they could walk and came to grief.

The church today is vastly different from that led by Archbishop Gonzi – and thank God for that! It is far nearer to the people than it was then and many of its institutions do so much good for no material gain. But, even so, people are moving out, if not consciously or with a bang, unconsciously and imperceptibly.

The links that remain are tenuous for some – many go to church for funerals, people still get married in church, First Holy Communion is still a cruncher, especially for those whose children are not baptised and who miss out on the goodies.

Inside the PN all this and more is keenly felt and lived – and nowhere more keenly than at the higher levels of policy-making.

On the one hand, the party is still perceived as being managed by remote control by the church in Malta. Maybe this is the wrong perception. But maybe too, past decisions – the choice of the magistracy, needed decisions about biotechnology shelved, etc. – have been influenced by the church. And, of course, anything to do with divorce, the state of people in ad-hoc relationships, gay relationships even.

From what I can grasp, both sides of the PN equation (PN and GonziPN) are actively seeking ways of tackling the issue, rather than, as in the past, avoiding and postponing any action. Today, postponing and avoiding the issue is not an option.

But having said that, there is still much thinking to be done. The recent squabbles in the press by priests with different ideas about divorce has been unseemly, but the issue has not been damaged by it. Priests have addressed the PN parliamentary group. Others have boarded individual MPs in their homes. The message has always been the same: protecting the family must be given priority.

At some point, maybe in the coming months rather than years, the PN at all its levels must come to terms with the issue and identify the way forward. Still, it will not be easy for the party to avoid a split. There is also a risk that the party’s present leaders will choose one way and thus continue to disenchant wider swathes of supporters already disenchanted by the way the party in government is behaving. Politics here come inextricably linked to religion.

There is no call, absolutely no call, for the church not to state its views. That the church must do, in the perhaps unconstitutional words in the Constitution. The church must also enjoy full internal freedom to judge and decide about marriages conducted in the church. But those who chose not to get married in church, those who would want their non-church marriages declared over and who maybe would want to solemnise a new relationship, must also have a chance to state their opinions, as must those who were married in church but who want to have their marriages decided outside the church.

Of course, marital breakdown affects children all over the world. Of course the marital breakdown of people you know affects their friends and their friends’ marriages. Of course marriage breakdown must not be encouraged by any state. But equally it is unthinkable in today’s world for people who are not part of the church to have their lives ruled by the church.

For the PN, all this will not be easy and the temptation will always be to say with Keynes “In the long run we’re all dead”. Still, this could be the right time to begin quiet and un-panicked talks. Maybe, too, the beginning of the long, long process could focus on such issues as the magistracy and maybe even biotechnology. Or maybe setting out the ground rules in the light of laws, legality and constitutionality could also come first.