Our country is in a fine mess. The whole democratic framework is at risk of total obliteration. Our finances, our reputation, our future are all shaky. Through strange mesmeric means or not, the Labour Party is on its way to become the sole party capable of being voted into government.
Truly a situation which makes you weep for this island.
Added to all this is a pandemic that has affected our lives and will affect our future in ways beyond our comprehension.
In this conundrum our opposition party has made a supreme effort to become an irrelevance. It should be its time to shine, to organise the hugest protests and battles. Yet it lies comatose.
Hopefully, it can shed its present skin and move on to greener pastures, with a new leader to sweep it to real change.
Unless the party renews itself, finds a new soul, it will only undergo a cosmetic change. If the leader changes but little else, the party will remain an icon of a past totally gone. Gone and buried.
The PN will be buried without a whimper and without a sigh. It will be ungrieved, unnoticed, having hammered the last of many nails in its own coffin and in the coffin of Malta’s democracy.
After dumping Adrian Delia and his close collaborators, the new leader must immediately establish a task force to propel the party to significance and to make itself newly relevant.
To anyone under 30, the PN is merely a relic of the pre-digital age. Even I, an old man of 64, find it hard to connect to anything of the PN other than its history.
The first thing the Partit Nazzjonalista needs to do is dump its name. To anyone who thinks it needs its glorious name I repeat what I’ve said for a few long years - sticking to that name ties the party to the horrors of the far-right. If your name sounds ideologically wrong how can you appeal to people who are not far-right?
Entities evolve, change, mutate. A political party is not a human christened by his parents who has to live with that name till his death or resort to changing his name by deed poll. The PN with its current name conjures up the image of a party aligned to the politics of Salvini in Italy, Orban in Hungary and Trump in the US.
The name change must be tied to a total brand changeover. The flag, anthem, slogan, all must go. All are antediluvian, all tied to a symbol which grates, to a party way past its prime.
The slogan “Religio et Patria” again smacks of right-wing ideology. Inclusiveness should be the party’s most important tenet. The recently suggested slogan, “At your service” is not just terrible, it’s meaningless.
The black background of the flag and the anthem are reminiscent of fascist era symbology.
Symbols represent a brand. And all these symbols should reflect an entity’s inner core. The party must first set out what it represents, what it stands for, and what it aims to achieve.
Few can explain what relevance the PN enjoys. The new challenge is to fill this gap. Make it immediately recognisable not just as an entity and a political force but as a set of values.
The party must thoroughly overview all it stands for. Saying it is all for democracy, and good governance without setting out what it plans to do will keep it going downhill and then imploding.
The party must delve deeply into how to move into the 21st century without creating a schism between the traditional and the liberal wing.
It must, if it is ever to resonate in any way with youths and democracy-seekers, embrace civil liberties. Even if it looks at its traditional Christian values, it must recognise that true Christianity (not fundamentalism) is all about inclusivity.
Anyone of a different sexual orientation, culture, creed, colour or whatever differs from the norm, should be included in all our civil liberties and rights. It should become a party that will explore and discuss everything and not exclude anything, including abortion and euthanasia. Nothing should be excluded from discussion.
The list of what the party should review is quite exhaustive. It needs to look into party financing, its own financial existence, the constitutionality or otherwise of the Labour Party appropriating properties which helped it to remain solvent while the PN went bankrupt.
It needs to review political parties’ dependence on businessmen and how the latter end up being in total control of politicians.
The PN must apologise for the mess they made when they were running and helping in the ruining of the country. And the young must be at the centre of this apology which needs to go beyond words and be set in the party core values. Of how to include the young. Youths must be included in all choices, decisions and plans. They are the future and they will face the problems that trouble the country.
The ideal contender for the leadership would have been a young person. With energy, with vision, with new vigour to change the party inside out.
The party must adopt a new strategy to implement meaningful gender equality in all spheres of society.
The party must retrace its steps and seek to redress all environmental damage done to this country. It has to do this both from the opposition benches and especially when, or if, it is in power.
The party needs to look at a strategic plan not just for the short term but also for the long term. Of what it will do in the environmental field and what it plans to do to have a sustainable framework for the economy.
The party also proved to be a bad guardian against corruption. Boasting as a great badge of honour that the PN is never as corrupt as the Labour Party is hardly anything commendable. Corruption in all its forms, whether in bulk or in small doses, is totally wrong.
Certain elements in the PN, in power as well as out, were corrupt. Any hint of corruption should entail immediate and permanent exclusion.
Should all this, and more, be done so close to an election?
If not now, when?
Unless the PN changes at its roots, finds a proper soul, it can’t win an election.
If it renews itself and becomes a party of sound principles and sounder policies, people will come back to it, will support it and will vote it in.
If it takes more than a couple of years to rebuild a dream and turn it into reality, so be it. If the PN miraculously wins in the state it is today, without a basic change in its existence, principles and core, it will only perpetuate the state of the country as it is today.
It will perpetuate an idea that the party in power takes over, despoils the country and then moves on to the opposition. The parties as they stand today just play musical chairs. To the detriment of the whole population.
If the PN becomes a torchbearer of sound democratic principles and values, it will eventually govern and bring true and lasting change in the country.
Then and only then will this country be able to move towards a sound future.
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