I am referring to the much-publicised informal meetings with constituted bodies that MEP Simon Busuttil is co-coordinating on behalf of the PN through AZAD. The fact that much play is being made of such meetings in the media merely proves one point – that they will do anything for a photo opportunity.

And that no matter to what extent the PN intends to carry out such bridge building, its primary objective seems to remain PR driven.

In the sense that regardless of the outcome, its main interest seems to be that of being seen to do something.

While Simon Busuttil is not to be underestimated, I personally think that his task took a false and wrong start when he dismissed the PN’s failures of the past four years to poor communications strategy.

If anything, since the beginning of the legislature, we have been bombarded with a communications blitz by the PN and its usual suspects – ranging from the over-the-top state run TV station which increasingly comes across as NET TV 2, down to a number of PN-friendly independent media and PN-leaning independent journalists whose primary objective seems to be that of restoring the PN’s ‘past glories’.

There was not much mincing of words in what energetic Nationalist MP Robert Arrigo had to say in his own column of this newspaper last week.

He made it clear that although the PN can recuperate, “one person will not solve the issues” (For which I am inclined to read Simon Busuttil!). Going on to add that it must take a lot of people to do the job and that the politics of exclusion has never and will never pay off!

He was no doubt addressing his own party rather than the Opposition in exercising such caution and in expressing such concern.

As one district MP who surely does not have to wait for his party diktat to do the rounds of his constituents through home visits and other social networking, I can very well understand and sympathise with his remark that in merely listening but not actually hearing what the people want, it is political suicide (for the PN).

This is the sentiment of all street wise politicians that I meet right across the political divide; something Dr Gonzi and his inner circle seem to have divorced themselves from during the last four years or so.

While the PL will be digging its own grave if it ever had to succumb to complacency – something I am convinced that Joseph Muscat will never do – the Nationalists continued to show how divorced they are from present-day realities when they blamed it all on poor communications; particularly when it is common knowledge that they have lost their base of support purely because they have mishandled many pivotal issues through sheer arrogance, insensitivity and political indifference.

As an editorialist claimed elsewhere, by wrongly pinning the blame on lack of communication the PN is simply trying to camouflage the problem.

The fact that Simon Busuttil himself – the man who is meant to lend a hand in saving the day – had succumbed to such wrong tactics should be even more worrying, since he seems to be falling into the same trap as GonziPN has been doing all along – bucking the key issues rather than addressing them as they should.

From what I can tell, the underlying problems that the country is facing are likely to prevail.

Let us take for an example Enemalta.

Last year during the first of the two successive S&P downgrades, their two major objections were that the Corporation lacked good governance and also needed urgently a refinancing plan.

Fourteen months later not only are we still awaiting tangible proof that good governance has been finally achieved and or restored in this badly-ailing corporation that risks leading the country itself to a further national downgrade with the credit rating agencies, but we are nowhere nearer the finalisation of the so-called refinancing plan.

Instead of committing himself to new timelines and or datelines regarding its finalisation, last week the minister merely resorted in parliament to a series of excuses to try and convince one and all why it is taking the corporation so long to finalise such a plan. He blamed it all on the banks’ demands, on the need for notarial searches, on the formulation of certain legal clauses and on and on.

The longer Enemalta takes in putting its own governance and finances in order, the more is a bad situation expected to grow worse.

From the consultation meetings that the PN has been conducting not only is it evident that political expediency is most likely to prevail on any strategic reform or renewal, but reading between the lines to translate the real message being conveyed to the media, one can easily tell that it is trying to emulate the same trick that Frank Portelli had carried out during the last electoral campaign.

Apart from the fact that Simon Busuttil, contrary to Dr Portelli, is considered to be part of the PN nomenklatura which independent-minded Frank Portelli never was and will never be, I am not that convinced that he can swing dissident voters the same way that Portelli did.

From a distance the whole exercise tends to remind me more of spin doctoring. Or rather of a strong doze of smoke and mirrors.

It seems to have the spontaneity of a pre-scripted exercise that is far too late in the day, even if GonziPN might, contrary to current rumours – which I am inclined to take with a pinch of salt – decide to hang on till the very end, in the hope of reversing its electoral fortunes.

I do not know how correct certain reports are that while the PN administrative council has been busy analysing the local election results, the PN’s own parliamentary group has neither met nor carried out any soul-searching.

If this is indeed the case this must be worrying indeed, particularly since Gonzi’s problems were and so far remain far more at a parliamentary level rather than purely within party administrative structures.

As things stand, I am increasingly getting the impression that the same way that the PN resorted to misplaced priorities in governing the country, it is now resorting to misplaced strategies in trying to reverse its declining party fortunes.

But nothing should or must be taken for granted, even though the cynical and the deluded might be hard to win back, particularly by an ‘out of touch’ government and party.

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Leo Brincat is the Shadow Minister for the Environment, Sustainable Development & Climate Change