The Nationalist Party held a general convention on the environment this weekend, ending yesterday.

It was held in a somewhat euphoric mood generated by the results of a MaltaToday survey which showed PN just 3 points away from Labour.

To the members in the audience, with a legislature half-way through and a government with a decreasing popularity due to its many mistakes over the past two and a half years, it is already campaign time and at no time before now has the party been so near to regaining power.

This is where clear decisions should be taken.

It was right for the party to focus on the environment, since this is under attack under this administration.

But  the party in Opposition must understand the risks involved. As one of the participants, Antoine Vella, wisely said, the party must be ready to lose votes if it wants to tackle the environmental issue head-on.

This is precisely what the members of the convention least wanted to hear, but it is the absolute truth.

The party is already hampered by so many persons who were at the helm in the preceding administration and who are still there. Some even spoke at the convention. It is indeed hard for a party that has suffered such a vote of no confidence as that suffered by the PN in 2013 to understand how deep it must have surgery to shake off the patterns of the past.

It must also be said that not many who spoke over the past weekend have impressed listeners with original thought. Many attacked the American University of Malta and the Zonqor Point ODZ land-grab and the closeness in the relationship between developers and the Labour government – all credible arguments to be sure, but hardly original.

At the same time, with the stakes now running so high, this is the time to ask PN some direct questions which unfortunately were not raised yesterday.

-         Is the party still in favour of a racetrack that will gobble up a million square metres of ODZ land?

-         Is the party going to declare a clear position with regards to the Armier boathouses?

The party does have many things going its way: this administration’s many mistakes have shown clearly the disadvantages of being in close relationships with developers. But the PN government was not averse to allowing irregularities to take place with its connivance. The fact that this government is worse is no argument, come 2018, to persuade people to forget the recent past and trust PN once again.

It is no use for the party leaders to stake all on what they claim is their personal honesty. What are needed are clear unequivocal policies regardless of the votes such policies bring or lose. We are where we are today precisely because policies are being tailored to suit particular interests.