Politics make sense if it starts from the people and finishes with the people, Nationalist Party leader Alex Borg said Saturday.

Speaking at the opening of the PN’s national convention at the Excelsior Hotel, Borg said that the event will serve for the PN to show that it is not only an Opposition party but also a government in waiting.

The convention, he added, offers the possibility for ideas to be exchanged and discussed, enabling the party to understand better what Malta needs in the present and in the future.

Malta and Gozo are not built with one voice, but with several voices brought together with one common aim, that of facing challenges which offer the opportunity to become better.

The convention, he said, was not an exercise of theory or lip-service, but a process that leads to solutions, he said.

The convention was also addressed by George Vital Zammit, who has been entrusted by the PN to draw up its electoral programme.

Zammit said that if a political party stops listening to what others are saying, it becomes its own echo.

He urged participants at the convention to say what they would like Malta to be in the years to come. We need to look at what we have, what we lack, and what we need, he said.

The challenges that the country is facing – social, environmental, political and technological – are not easy to overcome. The convention will seek to come up with the best solutions to these challenges, he said.

The PN’s president of the general council, Mark Anthony Sammut, said the country is heading towards an election and the PN needs to approach it not just to do better, but prepared to form the next government.

The convention continued Saturday with a number of workshops that debated several sectors, and will come to an end today.