Franco Debono and Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando have this in common, Jesmond Mugliett slightly less so: time and again they introduce into what they want items that create a whole stink and their opponents gleefully latch on to that and turn them into ogres.

In other words, they play into the hands of those whose interest is to discredit them and help them magnificently.

Yet, as I hope to conclude today, what they are doing is to actually widen the base of what we can no longer call the Nationalist Party, less and less GonziPN. In a way, but only if it is handled right by all involved, they are creating what Joseph Muscat claims to be creating (with less reason, I think) – a broad movement. Saying it like this is really a tall order. But look at all the aspects of the recent polls; the number of Don’t Knows, and the preference of young voters for Gonzi as against those for Muscat, and the admittedly huge lead Labour enjoys becomes less awful.

It’s a coalition, The Times and Dr Muscat said after JPO resigned from the PN. Of course it is not. A coalition is something formal, formalized by a written agreement, with rules and conditions attached. Like David Cameron’s with the Liberal Democrats.

This is nothing like that. It is very much a hazy situation, kept hazy on purpose by JPO so that he does not get boxed in, I suspect. Kept hazy because he wants to be able to react to any situation that might arise. But also, I think, because he may not want to be tainted as the one who brought about the election (and which led to the PN defeat).

And yet, there is much in what Dr Debono and JPO say that is shared by others, inside and outside the party.

I disagreed with how Dr Debono laid into Carm Mifsud Bonnici and how CMB’s resignation was brought about, but there was much truth in what Franco said. If only it wasn’t Franco, a practising lawyer in the criminal court, that said it.

I disagreed with how JPO went into overdrive against Richard Cachia Caruana and the way things developed. Malta lost the services of a brilliant civil servant who was (is) much respected in Brussels.

JPO’s later charges that aimed, as he put it, to seek the expulsion of Cachia Caruana from PN misfired badly, as I foresaw last week.

(There was more: the charges contained in the Maltastar stories on the day of the meeting, which tried to portray him as being against a PN minister, Lawrence Gatt, with drugs in the background undermined in a tremendous way the entire import of the PL motion against Cachia Caruana, which, supported by JPO, led to his resignation. If he had even ‘shipped’ a sitting minister, let alone the other episode regarding the head of the armed forces, then he was even more valid than the country realised and forcing him out was a terrible mistake).

Even so, however, (perhaps if only JPO did not personalise it so) there is a big, I would say, huge swath of people out there, in and out of the party, who agree the party needs a broader form of leadership that is not being served by the current PM-Cachia Caruana-Austin Gatt telescoped leadership.

The party badly needs opening up and all efforts being done to reduce it to a rump, to make it an even higher pyramid, where all decisions are taken at the top and the rest have only to applaud and support are doomed to failure. Isn’t this not so evident?

The closest analogy we can get to is what happened in the divorce issue and here, tellingly, JPO was a protagonist. Let us take a broad view:

The divorce issue is now behind us. Unless what happened did not happen, we would still have to agonise over it. And it took place in the best way, in mid-legislature, without bedevilling the coming election. And there has not been any stampede. And, also, the air is now calmer. Thank JPO for that.

We all know how the PN vote split on that issue. There was the PN core that stood firm and voted No, but many PN voters voted Yes. If we now consider only the No voters to be the real PN voters, then the PN is in trouble. But the PN always said that those who voted Yes were PN voters just the same.

Maybe this holds for both big parties, but it certainly holds for the PN: PN is always a broad coalition. It is only in Opposition that a party forgets its internal divisions and unites against a common enemy, like the PL is doing. But we all remember the strands in Eddie’s day – the Eddie strand, the Ugo strand, the Guido strand, the Louis Galea strand, and so on.

It is this broad coalition that is now in play. But I caution: people like Franco Debono, like JPO, especially if handled badly, or if they let rip, can destroy the carefully-nurtured coalition that is still possible but very fragile.

Over the past year, there have been innumerable votes taken, even a secret ballot at one point, as to who is the PN leader. Time and again, Dr Gonzi was the winner. But time and again, his authority has been challenged. At one point, JPO said there were 10 MPs who were critical of Cachia Caruana. A written statement signed by the backbench denied this.

Efforts were made to portray the rebels as shaky, fragile, maybe mad, persons. Certainly people with a personality problem.

But now their base is broadening: John Dalli came back and reiterated his complaints. Michael Falzon roundly criticized the Gonzi leadership. Two swallows don’t make a summer, I agree. As I said last week, talk to the people at ground level, talk to MPs even, or party officials, and there are many who are sceptical and worse of the party leadership.

There may not be enough time. The billboards are up and one can hear the drums beating.

But as long as that tenuous link remains, as long as JPO does not pull the plug, maybe a way can be found for a ‘wider PN’ coalition to be formed. Just as Gonzi is waiting for the polls to turn around, or maybe for the City Gate project to be finished. I have long been urging a fundamental clarification to be held. Or is failure staring it in the face not enough for the wider PN to come round and shake itself up?

Just as last year it was not easy to be a PN supporter and yet vote for divorce, so too it will not be easy to stand up and criticise the government and still declare oneself in support of a wider PN. If that, of course, is given the chance to be born and to flourish.

It is only the reality of failure that may get the PN to reform. And even then, it may be too late.

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