So all the talk about a new PN leader destined to lead the party to renewed glory has come down to a contest between two knowns and two unknowns.

There are more once-hopefuls who have stayed out than these four who have submitted their applications. And curiously there are more knowns than unknowns among them.

This, I hold, says more about the state of the party than otherwise. They must have looked at Simon Busuttil passing in a matter of days from Hallelujahs to Crucify him! and said to themselves that there, but for the grace of Heaven, stand they.

What I find fascinating is the way in which PN keeps shedding people who just disappear from sight. I can draw a list but people will add more: Joe Saliba, Austin Gatt, Lawrence Gonzi, etc. Now Labour does not lose people like that.

There is now a big debate about PN returning back to its roots, which is shorthand for returning to a conservative stance and kicking out the reforms identified with Simon Busuttil – gay marriage, coalition with Marlene Farrugia and the sidelining of most who can be identified with the Gonzi years.

It is a party that from the outside at least seems to have just one aim: to kick Labour out and replace it in government. All talk about right/left goes out the window especially now that the two parties have become centre parties.

Nor can one say, at least in my opinion and looking at the party from the outside and from some distance, that any one of the four candidates definitely represents one ideology more than the others. This is what probably stopped some of the would-be candidates from submitting their application.

The four, some more and some less, represent some of the groups inside the PN galaxy but they do so in an incoherent way. It is more people knowing other people than real trends, opinions and ideologies. If one were to ask them their reaction to a series of problem issues (let us say about migration, about the EU, etc) they may give a series of nuanced answers but I doubt if widely-divergent opinions.

I therefore have an issue with the method that will be followed in the election. The small number of candidates does not, in itself, express the wide divergence of views inside the party. There is no way for the party delegates to state their opinions and their preferences.

Nor will there be any time for groups to come together and for coalitions to be drawn up. As I understand it, the party executive or council will choose two from these four and then the party delegates will vote to choose the new leader. In other words, the group that will do the first sifting is different from the group that makes the final choice. The two groups are not co-extensive, do not represent the party grass-roots – there is a gap, a dissonance.

Incidentally, there was a proposal to conduct background checks on the candidates but I believe that has not been followed up.

So the end result is that people will be voting on the four personalities as personalities and nothing more. Not on their policies, not on their ideologies, nor on their plans, nor on the people they will surround themselves with. Some are party insiders, with all the positives and negatives that entails, and some are outsiders. Who’s to say that an outsider is not just what the party needs, and vice-versa?

The four candidates are thus reduced to do the rounds of party clubs, go to any village festa that’s handy, and meet people who will probably not be involved in the first and all-important round.

Some have come out with some specific proposals and maybe the others will do so. The proposals I have seen are mainly generic proposals mainly to do with inner party affairs. Others speak more generically of a regenerated party, about giving a new life to the party media, etc.

That, I say with respect, is not what people want to hear. They want to hear about a new approach the party will take to make it electable. It does not have to be merely anti-Muscat, or to challenge the PM and the PL at every step of the way.

It has not passed unnoticed that the party has not so far commissioned a study about the reasons for the June defeat, although the last time it did, after the 2013 election, was soon shelved and forgotten. Or perhaps someone did not want to commission a report that will be heavily critical not just of Simon Busuttil but of the party leadership as a whole that has resigned en bloc with him. If that’s the right term, considering the leadership is still present in Parliament and, word yesterday had it, has no intention of resigning its MP seat.

These are the conditions under which the party leader will be chosen. There could, should, have been a better way of doing it.

But there must be a reason why the selection of the new leader has been surrounded with so many conditions and pre-tailored choices. To understand that, one has to see, touch and experience the bitter battle just under the waterline between the various groups that stand to gain from the election of this candidate as against that one.

In a different context, one would wish the election to have been otherwise managed. The first selection will definitely condition the ultimate choice of the new party leader.

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