Listening to the speeches in Parliament on Wednesday risked turning the whole event into a time-warp.

There was not just the sound and cadences of Lawrence Gonzi, which we have heard so much over the past months, but also his worldview and his incredible detachment from the reality experienced by many others.

Over the last few months, after the terrible news of 10 March, people have looked back and tried to understand how they never saw it coming. The prevailing sense was that the PN might lose the election but by only a few thousand votes and certainly not by the astounding margin of 37,000 votes – a record in Maltese political history.

People looked back at the speeches that were made and at the spin provided by a strong government machine and many have concluded that the PN leaders were living in a bubble and their supporters had allowed themselves to be lulled into a safe mode while, it later transpired, the country at large and huge swathes of PN voters decided to switch and vote for Joseph Muscat because the PN leadership had lost them.

It had lost them in the divorce campaign and its aftermath. It had lost them with the dreams of grandeur and the repeated insistence that Malta had escaped from the crisis and that everything was hunky-dory. It had lost them with arrogant ministers who refused to listen and who continued to accumulate mistakes.

When then, in mid-campaign, far more serious allegations surfaced of corruption in sensitive areas such as fuel procurement, the situation was already too far gone to be redressed. And yet, the spin machine kept going and Dr Gonzi kept going as if cramming a thousand meetings into a day could do anything.

The supporters were deluded into believing an election victory was, to use the phrase that kept circulating around, ‘do-able’. Like hell it was.

There was the same playing with mirrors on Wednesday. The news portals continued to say there were crowds wanting to salute and thank Dr Gonzi. In actual fact it was just a score or two, and many of them had jackets on which meant they had come from the Parliament Chamber and must have been in the inside core.

It reminded me of 1972, when the badly-beaten PN organised a mass meeting in Palace Square to protest against what Dom Mintoff was doing to the British. In the end, only an old lady with a PN flag turned up. That was due to the climate of fear of that time. This time, people stayed away because they could not stomach the charade.

This is the wasteland that the PN has become. I will not say this is Dr Gonzi’s inheritance because he himself is as much a victim of this disconnection from reality as anyone else. But following the election defeat and while to all intents and purposes the party has continued going through the motions, its core has been hollowed out.

It has lost its raison d’être. The way in which it has taken on issues such as gay rights, and in future months maybe gay marriage, is not too dissimilar from Labour. It has no reason left to exist except to hope to push out Joseph Muscat’s Labour.

It used to be European in contrast to Mintoff’s third world stance. It used to be Christian in contrast to Mintoff’s secularism. It used to be pro-EU in contrast to Alfred Sant’s ‘Switzerland in the Mediterranean’. Mintoff was very definitely with the Workers’ Party: the PN, in contrast, was never the party of the rich or the middle classes but inevitably this was how it was perceived.

Today, bar the leadership, there is nothing that distinguishes the parties: both are for the EU, both are happily married to businessmen and espouse the cases of people in business. If anything, as the election and its aftermath continue to show, Joseph Muscat’s party is more on the side of business than Dr Gonzi and his business-stifling Mepa ever were.

I am not saying, and I will not say, that Dr Gonzi emptied the party from political content but that is what his party is now reduced to: a party without a cause. Up to last March, at least it had power and could spread around the incumbency that is associated with power. People knocked on doors asking for what only people in power could give: jobs, houses, promotions, the lot. Now people knock on other doors. And you know what? They are listened to, they are treated as people worth being listened to.

There was nothing in what Dr Gonzi said that he had not said before. There was the odd phrase or two in which he admitted his (generic) mistakes and said “Sorry”. But there was no real facing up to the huge responsibility that led to so awful a debacle.

I will not go so far as to say that politics is about winning, though there are many who would profess this. But, surely, politics is turned upside down when it boldly marches to an astounding defeat.

Again and again we heard about principles and about ideals, and the recent asylum seekers’ issue lent added poignancy to the words expressed. But even here, any cursory look around will see a population that, rightly or wrongly, is alarmed by the arrivals of boat people and, principles or no principles, want to do anything to reduce this recurrence.

There can be no doubt that it is Dr Gonzi who has remained firm to his principles and his upbringing. It is the people who have changed and they have changed a great deal, a considerably great deal. Beyond the purely material issues relating to the governance of the country, the country and Dr Gonzi have come to a parting of the ways.

Without having any insider knowledge, this is, I surmise, what led Dr Gonzi to the rather rare conclusion to move out not just of Parliament but also, I think, of political life. Rightly or wrongly, Eddie Fenech Adami still keeps his political antennae going. From what he said on Wednesday, I think Dr Gonzi has retreated to private life. Full-stop. It’s not just being without public appointments or going for walks with his grandchildren, but sinking into a private life. Dr Muscat latched on to this: the anonymity of being out of public focus.

The Nationalist Party, its leader and all, have accompanied Dr Gonzi to the very end, almost as one accompanies a person who has died. There was a loyalty, a celebration of thanksgiving, an appreciation of all that Dr Gonzi stood for and a sense of loss.

Sooner or later, however, the party must give itself a shake and see about surviving and moving on. Whatever emotions were in view on Wednesday, the party must, for its own sake, come clean about what led people to lose trust in it. And if Dr Gonzi made a very superficial admission of guilt and mistakes, the party must give a far clearer sign that it has seen the errors of its ways and has changed, or is changing. I have said this before: there is simply no sign in the composition of the Shadow Cabinet that those who, by their faults and omissions, contributed to the defeat have been made to see the error of their ways.

The PN may thrive on the many mistakes being made by this administration and the many inconsistencies in the lists of ministers’ assets deposited in Parliament, but these are short-term tactics.

It must search for the reasons to support its existence, for what it is exactly that differentiates it from the other party/ies and what it thinks it can offer the people of this country that Joseph Muscat cannot offer.

[email protected]

ECHR

In last week’s article I spoke about the action undertaken by Maltese NGOs to block Dr Muscat’s proposed pushbacks. Of course, the ECHR is a court under the auspices of the Council of Europe, not the EU.