So now all that the once-mighty Nationalist Party could come up with were only two candidates.

On to the next stage. While the applications to be the next leader were received by one commission, the whole process is now in the hands of a different commission which is scrutinising the two candidates and ensuring there are no problems regarding them.

The idea, like all good ideas, is a worthy one

But it can just as easily lead to grief.

On Monday, party secretary Charles Bonello, speaking on Net, was surprisingly reduced to incoherence as he tried to explain the convoluted procedure to the party members.

This commission (maybe I was sleepy but I do not remember who its members are) now has six weeks to do its job.

Nobody seems to have twigged that this hiatus will destroy any momentum in the campaign.

In fact, the two candidates seem to have carried on with meeting party members in the various kazini around.

Sometimes it's just five or six men around a beer.

But the problem, as I see it, is: what happens if they come to feel they have to fail one candidate? 

Can the party have a one-horse race? Or will this second commission be forced to cut corners so as to keep the semblance of a race?

We are now navigating in a tricky area where value judgements dominate, hence subjectivity rules.

Maybe with hindsight the race should not have come down to this. And if, as indeed happened, only two candidates applied, the process should have been blocked and the applications reopened.

I also get the impression the party's media is having a holiday while waiting to see who is the new kap. So this has been a week with no news on the campaign at all. Or maybe the newsroom does not trust it can be fair and impartial so it skips the whole issue.

That might also explain the party following the Robert Abela trick of holding press conferences only with tame, hand-held journalists.

I live in eternal hope of seeing the two candidates with their backs to the wall, facing inconvenient questions from media persons that will not be bought off.

And that does not mean One Media provocateurs only.

Anyone with just a reading knowledge of the scene could probably come up with some pressing questions. There are then the issues people want to hear about. And not be fobbed off with vague wish-lists for the future.

One other thing: the race, such as it has been structured, focuses on the candidates but not at all on the whole team. This implies that, in the minds of those who created this race, the leader on his own can do everything. But that's hardly the case, in modern politics at least.

The question I raised at the beginning remains. What happens if one of the candidates turns out to be manifestly unfit for purpose? Or what happens if this commission were to turn a blind eye on some serious issue just to keep the race going?

Cultural note

Identities and philanthropies of an Ottoman Greek broker in Malta

This paper by Ariadni Moutafidou appeared in the Mediterranean Historical Review of 2013.

The commercial and personal archive of Salonica-born Malta merchant Giovanni di Niccolo' Pappaffy (1792 - 1886) is a rich source for the political and cultural identities, commercial networks and intellectual life of a Greek diaspora merchant-entrepreneur and Ottoman citizen prospering in British-governed Malta.

Pappaffy's views on politics, economics, and social fairness derived from a broader worldview, according to which stability and peace were indispensable preconditions for economic and social progress.

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