Last Sunday the monthly survey by MaltaToday showed that those who would not vote in any election now number more than those who say they still intend to vote for the Nationalist Party.

This prompted later on that day the former PN MP and even for a short while minister Jason Azzopardi to pen an article on Facebook in which he yearned for the appearance of a Maltese counterpart to Emmanuel Macron, that is a person who emerges so to speak out of nowhere and who manages to gain majority support and get elected to power.

Then Raphael Vassallo latched on to this and had a jolly time playing around with this Jason suggestion. He seemed to read Jason as angling to be the Maltese Macron and poured scorn on the whole idea.

Both the survey results and the Jason – Raphael debate of sorts look at the issue from the point of view of the Nationalist Party and the query what will happen to what remains of this party.

I venture to suggest this is looking at things from the wrong perspective, like looking through the wrong end of a telescope.

Maybe it hurts but the fact is the Nationalist Party has no future. It has had all those internal convulsions and leadership campaigns and no-confidence votes and so on and is now a deeply fractured relic of the party that brought Independence, EU membership and the euro to Malta.

Its present leader loses support from one survey to the next and it is remarkable that not even the abortion issue, milked by the leader all over the country, did not see him notching up support. On the contrary he continued to lose support among those who refused to toe the anti-abortion line. Whatever he does, he loses support. Now he has started to lose key aides.

Like Humpty Dumpty all the king’s horses and all the king’s men will not make PN like it used to be. It happens. History marches on.

This is no time for any would-be Macron to emerge and ride to victory and the Auberge de Castille. They are all ready to pull down any such contender and tear him to bits, either by focusing on some past foible or anyway by tagging and labelling him and aligning him with one section (or fragment) of the party and setting the other sections (fragments) on him. I am assuming it could be a he but it could very well be a she.

Some would urge haste – the European Parliament elections loom and meanwhile what’s to happen to the party’s building and TV and media?

At the same time, there is widespread anger and disillusionment with Robert Abela and his team. But all this anger and disillusionment is not ready to be channelled into support for a PN that has not shaken off its past and which now has reintegrated some figures from the past into its front bench.

The sad truth is that this tsunami of anger could still peter off and leave Abela without any challenger or challenge. That’s how the votes of the disillusioned can be wasted and rendered null.

The coming EP election could be an opportunity to begin a new cycle. Instead of supporting the official PN candidates, those who are angry at Robert Abela and his clan ought to come together and choose a non-PN candidate and force him to Brussels.

I have long been saying there’s a big Right-wing constituency out there which includes many disillusioned Labour supporters which refuses to come out and leave Labour as long as the only alternative is PN.

Right now what this requires is for courageous people to put themselves up for election outside the PN and see what that gets them.

I said it once and got chewed up for my efforts that the EP is not an important election and can well serve as a test-case. Otherwise Robert Abela will continue to ride roughshod and trample everybody around.

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