Not being a party member, I did not vote in the PN leadership election yesterday week. I kept absolutely silent in the run-up to the vote. But now that it is over, I can finally declare my judgement: Mario de Marco was by far the better candidate but he lost.

Before the vote, both Simon Busuttil and Mario de Marco called me, separately and independently of each other, in for a chat.

I had expressed myself, rather negatively, about the two of them and I certainly never imagined I would be rooting for Dr de Marco. Yet, having met them, I was more than impressed by de Marco’s intelligence, acumen and strategic skills. Not being in any way close to his late father, I cannot say if Mario is even better than his father or otherwise.

On the contrary, Simon Busuttil, at close quarters and in a private conversation is as vapid as he sounds in his speeches, all stereotypes and hackneyed phrases come tumbling out.

I cannot divine why the PN councillors plumbed for him yesterday week. But as far as I can see, there was a mix of reasons – loyalty to the man the ‘party’ wanted as its head, loyalty to the man brought in by the previous Prime Minister, and of course, the root and branch followers of Eddie Fenech Adami who had trumped Guido de Marco in 1977.

The PN is a party made up of memories and it is completely different, for instance, from Labour and from many political parties one can think of in other countries. It prefers its leaders to come from the main root of the party and it is not ready, as it showed last week, to abandon this main stock for a new beginning. For Mario de Marco would have meant, for all his lineage and track record in the party, a new beginning (Well, so was Eddie Fenech Adami in his time, and so too, come to think of it, was Giorgio Borg Olivier). The fact that even after such a huge drubbing at the polls, the party councillors still chose the man closely linked to the outgoing leader speaks volumes about party discipline, so much in disarray this past year.

Now that the party has expressed its will, the party must build up its new leader. I see all the various feeble efforts by the party to promote Simon Busuttil as the new leader with something like condescension: the normal Sunday supplement, the picture on every front page, and the first item on NET News. They did the same with Lawrence Gonzi, not that it changed matters.

The fact is that the leader of any party may not necessarily be the most brilliant person, have the sharpest mind, and be intellectually superior for the party to accept him and for him to lead the party on to electoral victories.

On the contrary, perceiving he is inferior to the man he beat may make the winner more cautious, more prudent and wiser in tackling the various issues and decisions that will be asked of him. I am not referring specifically to Dr de Marco here, but a leader who shines for his brilliance may at the end, with his unconsciously superior attitude, rub his supporters the wrong way. And a leader who knows he is not the best man may be cautious and prudent and surround himself with people who could help him make the best decisions.

The Nationalist Party is coming out of an era where its leader thought he knew everything and did not need any outside help. The slender victory in 2008 helped morph him into an even more absolutist frame of mind. The last thing this party now needs is for Dr Gonzi’s successor to be brilliant and superior and take no counsel. (Not that Dr de Marco would necessarily be that, but then he was not chosen).

Dr Busuttil has rushed off (or has been rushed off his feet) since Wednesday to run here and there and speak to as many people as he could. He really does not need that.

The fact is that sooner or later (probably sooner seeing the incredible mistakes accumulated by the Muscat administration when the first 100 days are only halfway through) the 37,000 plus majority will whittle down. Politics in Malta, we keep repeating, are cyclical and sooner or later the pendulum will swing the other way. Labour deputy leader Toni Abela said as much in an interview he gave to l-orizzont last Monday: the huge majority can well go the other way.

The 2013 election has shown an increasingly volatile and fickle electorate which turned against the PN administration for a variety of reasons ably marshalled by Dr Muscat. Even in Dr Muscat’s case, I still believe he did not really have to promise all that much, the current was flowing in his direction anyway. And look at where all those promises and commitments are leading him.

In simpler terms, all that Dr Busuttil has to do is to sit back and let the ebb and flow of electoral opinion flow in his direction. The only thing he needs to do (which he is not doing) is to keep his mouth shut. Unfortunately, Dr Busuttil’s track record in the past election campaign was of giving away so many freebies to the Opposition (today’s government) by not really thinking out well the consequences of his off the cuff comments. The party now ought to sit on him and to allow him only very few chances of such hara-kiri.

He and the party may well think these are heady days as a renewed verve of enthusiasm takes hold. But this too is misplaced enthusiasm: the same people now milling around him are the same people who used to mill around Dr Gonzi and the same people especially in the party’s inner core who are responsible for the electoral defeat. By switching smoothly from Dr Gonzi to Dr Busuttil they are safeguarding their own interests and allowing the party no time for a proper clean-up. To lose by such a margin, the party, and not just its leader, must have been doing some things really bad. It’s also unfair that only the past leader has taken all the blame.

People are now rushing in to fill all the spaces that have been, or are being, left empty. The party has been turned into a jamboree of leapfrogging ambitions which, again, leaves the new leader with barely enough room to manoeuvre. I repeat what I have just said: many people who should be farmed out are being promoted well beyond the level of their incompetence. If there’s anything that is immediately undermining Dr Busuttil’s authority it is this. And, of course, the smokescreen as to who did what.

They did not see the writing on the wall not even when it was written in huge cubic letters. And they are still not seeing the writing. For all I have said about the cyclicality of Maltese politics, there is no guarantee the party will win a majority (or at least an equality) in next year’s MEP election. Nor that it will necessarily and absolutely win in five years’ time.

Instead of rushing around and pressing the flesh, Dr Busuttil must concentrate on really leading the parliamentary Opposition in the place where it has its constitutional basis: Parliament. Dr Gonzi was the best Speaker Malta’s Parliament ever had but he was never a Leader of the Opposition except in these turmoil-filled weeks. It will be up to Dr Busuttil to set up his party to oppose, as is its constitutional duty, with reason and with parliamentary acumen.

Secondly, Dr Busuttil must study and analyse where the chinks are in the present government’s set-up, the many inconsistencies between what was said and promised and what is being done today.

Thirdly, he must plan ahead for the time when PN will once again be in government and ensure it has viable and suitable policies to offer and implement.

But above all, he must do all in his power to avoid the PN being tarnished with the claim it is the party of a small clique who hug power to their chest instead of opening up to society. Not even Dr Muscat, who promised so much, is doing that – and this is Dr Busuttil’s greatest opportunity.

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