The four candidates who are vying to lead the Nationalist Party are set to take part in an activity tonight together.

It will be an unprecedented event in the PN’s history, as the party aims to project a united front in an attempt to avoid a repeat of the 2004 leadership contest that left deep scars within the party. It was evident that the leadership contest which pitted Lawrence Gonzi against John Dalli in a runoff left a very bitter taste in everyone’s mouth. The rift has not been healed until today and some would even argue that it might not even be healed completely in the upcoming contest. But this campaign seems to have been different.

Of course, politicians are master actors, but while there is a healthy contest going on, there does not seem to be the intense bitterness of 2004.

If anything, the candidates – at least on the surface – seem to have been almost ‘too nice’ to each other. All of them – Ray Bugeja, Simon Busuttil, Mario de Marco and Francis Zammit Dimech have all heaped praise on each other. They also were quick to say that they agreed with proposals that all of them made, saying that the most important thing was to regenerate the party and heal the rifts that have split it asunder.

One indicator that the leadership hopefuls are genuine in their approach is the way that none of them have billed the vote as a “contest” or “battle” – all of them have always referred to it as a “race”.

But of course, we will have to wait and see what happens once the vote is taken and there is a winner and a loser. One of the most brutal aspects of a leadership contest is that in a runoff (if it goes that far), there is no second place. There is only a winner and a loser.

There is, of course, a possibility that a winner might be elected outright tomorrow, but that looks unlikely as according to the PN statute, to be successful, a candidate must obtain at least two thirds of the about 900 councillors’ votes.

What is imperative for the PN is that the winner of the likely runoff wins gracefully and the loser loses gracefully. With all the acrimony and kvetching that wracked the party in the last five years (for reasons different to the 2004 leadership contest), it needs to find peace within itself. If the PN does not settle down and work, once again, as a unit, then it cannot even hope to be a strong opposition, let alone prospective government.

Some said that the PN should have put forward an interim candidate, just to steady the ship for a year or two, and then hold its ‘proper’ leadership vote later. In theory, this might have been a good idea. But, it could have also given rise to a harsher long draw out contest which would have been carried out in the shadows. The PN is unlikely to elect a leader tomorrow, but the first round vote should give an indication of how things are going to pan out. As we wrote in a leading article when the leadership contest was announced, we write again: “May the best man win”.