What remains of the Nationalist Party after this almighty drubbing by Labour?

Very little, if one adds together the results of the MEP election to those for the local councils. There was a map of Malta, which I saw on Friday before the last batch of results were published, in which practically all of Malta was covered by blobs of red with just a few sporadic blotches of blue in some rare areas. That is the cumulative impact of this double election.

The PN has been well and truly vanquished. In absolute terms, as Party defenders were prompt to point out, the 1947 election was worse, in terms of numbers, but this is now and it truly hurts. The claims on Sunday by the PN top brass, that the final result is better than was projected by the opinion polls, are ridiculous and show the shabby mentality of those who tried to offer this sop. Such arguments make the pill doubly painful to swallow.

There is another consideration to make: around 60 per cent of the PN vote in the MEP elections went to two candidates: Metsola and Casa, who were not really pushed forward by the Party leadership. Actually, one can call this vote the Daphne cohort. They are Joseph Muscat’s real flop, a mighty slap in the face, as the more he campaigned against them, the more angry voters plumped for Metsola-Casa in a show of defiance. But it’s hard to classify them as ‘PN voters’.

So apart from the really hard-core PN districts, the rest of the country is now Labour, hard core or tepid. The PN has become a rarity.

Nor can it be said that those who abstained were all PN voters – any primitive or rudimentary analysis can show that this is not true.

All this goes to demonstrate the sheer futility of the exercise by the PN media these past few weeks to show a Party unanimity that just was not there; to show the Party leader as being here, there and everywhere (and always on the front page) and to make it seem that huge crowds were gathering every day, when it was clear and patent that – even in the last days – the attendance (of the same people, day after day) was meagre.

The newsrooms, the papers, the online pages are all full of speculation, but what is important are the figures, the numbers.

Then again, many people seem to think in exclusively Maltese terms as if we were the only inhabitants of the earth, but these were European elections and, perhaps for the first time, local elections had a continental impact. These elections showed the resurgence of the Right, though perhaps not as much as they had hoped for.

We may have had the same result but, as usual, these were cloaked in the diatribes and Party competition in Malta. We noticed the increase in votes for Lowell but few realised this was in line with what is going around us. Actually, it was rather tame considering the impact Salvini is having in Italy, Orban in Hungary, etc.

Going forward, this is one development that the PN might take in future – to move to the Right, to increase the anti-migrant content of its message. Adrian Delia tried to do this but in a typical half-baked manner, one step forward and two steps back. The PN tried to keep its feet in both camps and disappointed all sides.

Should Delia remain leader of the PN? I note it is a typical European practice to resign after such a defeat. This is, in its way, the rule of law: the defeated must give way. Here, on the contrary, we had Clyde Puli declare – even before the votes were all counted – that Delia would not resign. Of course, Puli himself, as Delia and Portelli and the rest, have their (lavish) packages to defend. But the Party delegates, who have the last word, should have the last say. They must not accept to be led or decisions taken for them.

There is nothing automatic about political parties and neither do they exist by some divine dispensation. Parties come and parties go. Parties can die – and, in fact, some have. Going just by numbers and what we can make of them, the votes registered for PN MEP candidates contain, as said, a considerable number of Daphne supporters, certainly not all PN voters.

This can be confirmed by the vaster bloodbath that was the local council elections, as council after council succumbed to the PL tidal wave with a cohort of young, presentable, candidates. Councils that were borderline or that switched to PL last time, remained PL this time and so far – up to the time I am writing – no Council has switched to the PN except maybe a village or two in Gozo.

Now if Delia and his coterie around him want to remain at the top, hold press conferences every day, go round making speeches every Sunday, even bringing in themes such as abortion – by which, the electorate has shown, it will not be led astray – he’s welcome to it. Every day that passes is another nail in the coffin of a once-glorious party.

‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑

Michael Bonnici – an apology

The sudden, and premature, death of former Deputy Speaker Michael Bonnici brought back pungent memories.

In my youth, I knew the family – his father, Dante, with his traditional pharmacy in Zebbug, and his brothers Tommy and Frans.

But one day, during the Adjournment, Michael made a fiery speech against, if I remember, abortion. John Zammit, from the Liberals, replied with an equally fiery letter. The MP felt aggrieved and raised a claim of Breach of Privilege.

There ensued numerous sittings of the specially-commissioned Privileges Committee which soon resolved itself into Emmy Bezzina, Zammit’s lawyer, making long speeches every time a question was asked. The proceedings were turned into a farce. The other members of the Committee grew tired of the repetitive and futile meetings and sat on Mr Bonnici to close the matter.

At the last sitting, Mr Bonnici asked rather plaintively: “What about my apology?” meaning an apology directed to him. No one replied and we skipped down the stairs to freedom.

But now, after all these years and at least on my part, I feel an apology to Mr Bonnici is owed.

[email protected]