Why do I want to be PN leader? Because it is my duty.

Let me amplify that.

It is the ambition of all parents to give their children the best possible chance in life. You cannot live their lives for them, but you must prop them up the best way you can. If there is any point to life, it must be to take good care of the legacy we have inherited, to make it work better while it is entrusted to us and to leave it to our children in better shape than we found it in.

History does not always move ahead and forward. If it did, we would be floating on our destiny and it wouldn’t matter what effort we put into building a better world: it would happen on its own.

It is self-evident that it does not happen on its own. This is what creates the need for politics. Politics is a much-maligned business. Many profess to be indifferent to it as some would be about cricket, say. The direct link between someone’s life and what it is that politicians seem to be doing and talking about is completely missed. Or worse, due to the sickening experience of corrupt or incompetent politicians, the whole profession is tarnished and people seek to live their lives in spite of politics rather than supported by it.

There is a famous lecture by Roberto Benigni that makes the rounds on social media. He says no doubt there are fathers who beat or neglect their children. But that is no indictment of fatherhood. Why blame all politicians for the misdeeds of some? He also challenges the ambivalent and the indifferent. How can you not care about your children’s education, their prospects in life, their safety and their health?

Everyone does all they can to address just those issues but some do so as a full-time job, focusing on the needs of their community, working for the future of children even if they are not their own.

Because that is the distinction of humanity. If we just cared for the needs of our own children or the children of our neighbours and siblings we would be no more than pack animals – who do as much. Humans care for children they will never know and feel a duty of care and a responsibility to give their best in the interests of a community of people who will not know them and is not likely to have any gratitude towards them.

Is anyone who is not a politician neglectful of his duty? Of course not. We all have different roles in our democracy and we are called to contribute in whichever way we can. Almost all of us vote and taking that decision is, of all acts of community life, the most significant and charitable. Many of us volunteer our time and money to support the causes in which we believe. The calling a few of us have is to leave aside their personal business and dedicate all their waking hours to serving their community.

I would not be entirely honest if I were to say that this calling came late in my life. I confess to have rather stubbornly tried to ignore it because I loved what I was doing. The law, too, is a great calling and I gave all my energy to becoming reasonably good in that line of work. And although politics was never far from my mind, my work in sport was a major community responsibility although, of course, people who are not interested in football – and I know they exist – might be as indifferent to it as they would be about cricket, say.

So what has now changed to convince me to fulfil this grave duty?

Firstly, it was a change within me. I feel ready. Any sooner, and I would not have had the experience I have gained in life by earning my keep and volunteering my time and energy to community life. The job of Party and Opposition leader – and of course the job of Prime Minister five short years from now – requires an extended novitiate in real life outside the ivory tower of political isolation but deep in the challenges and problems faced by ordinary working families every day of their lives.

Secondly, it was a change around me. After the regime of Mintoff and Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici was overthrown, I grew up in the fresh air of the freedom, economic liberation and social justice built by the governments of Eddie Fenech Adami and Lawrence Gonzi. I grew up with the Fukuyama consensus that capital ‘H’ History had ended, for no country would ever want to go back to the rotten corruption and putrid unfairness of Socialism.

Sure, the PN never had and never will have a divine right to govern. It has to earn that right every day and losing to Labour, in my mind, would not have needed to be a reversal to the 1980s. It would have been a natural and seamless progression of the democracy that the PN had built. But the Labour government of the last five years may have shed the iron curtain rhetoric of the 1980s and adopted slick packaging that made the PN’s look archaic in comparison. Still, however, corruption at the very top reached and exceeded anything ever seen before in our time.

Simon Busuttil was doing a perfectly great job combating that corruption and I stood full-square behind him. But now that he is leaving the job, the PN must finish what it started. It must articulate better its arguments. It must debate and resolve its hesitations. It must recruit to replenish its ranks. There is much change to be made, but one thing remains the same: our belief as a party in doing what’s right, no matter what.

It is not without much introspection and grappling with doubts that I have resolved to follow in the footsteps of my heroes. But it is time for my generation to step up to its duty as Fenech Adami, Gonzi and Busuttil did when they were called upon to do so.

Here I am to see the ending of the days of corruption when our people are made to think that politicians are in it to inflate their personal stash rather than to serve their community.

Here I stand to fulfil my duty. Here I stand to serve.