Despite losing four elections in a row people in the Nationalist Party still try to delude themselves the party keeps losing only because of massive corruption on the other side.

They must think people can be fooled. Or forgetful. Or unable to get the long view.

Time and again, over the past decades, the party managed to cobble a majority mainly through external forces such as the Church or the British colonial power or through benefiting from Dom Mintoff 's extremism.

Time and again the Nationalist Party lost the majority it had gained. People don't forget.

In the 1950s and the 1960s, when people still went to church, the Catholic Church exercised a capillary control over people's lives that nearly everybody has forgotten today. Except the victims.

The parish priests kept a detailed database (on cards those days) about each household in the parish with information being added, in pencil, to say they were 'M' or Mintoffian.

I know, because I handled them.

Say your son needs a job. The politician calls the parish priest who checks the cards and the appropriate information is relayed. Or the 'M' tag on your family made you the prime target for transfers to the other side of the island (few people had cars in those years, before today's extensive public transport system).

Or that meant too you could be sent to some back-breaking job like pulling up roadside weeds, repairing rubble walls, etc in the sun.

There are people still alive who managed the system. Or children of the politicians who ran such an undemocratic system. Do they think people have forgotten?

This doesn't mean the party did nothing good in the years it was in government.

It liberalised trade and removed the shackles of a monopolistic system that benefited only some insiders. But this was a reform that remained incomplete - those who had benefited got to keep their ill-gotten riches as the "reconciliation" slogan was used to absolve all kinds of illegalities.

The PN in government opened up tertiary education and enabled access to university first then to MCAST without the corruption hard-wired in Mintoff and KMB's alternative creation. Again, it was a half-baked reform and the Church and private schools soon lost the autonomy they had gained in the long battle of the schools. Today they are just government schools with a different uniform. Parents don't really have a choice.

The party does not seem to have understood how past and present leaders have caused damage to the party's image through watering down the party's adherence to the Christian faith, and the Western European bloc. Its past leaders have dabbled in world politics and came out in the forefront of the pro-Pal world group, which historically betrays Malta's past history. When you betray your past like this, how can you expect people to take you seriously?

Also, the party came to power as a reaction against Mintoff's dalliance with Russia and Communism. But what did the Party do once it found itself in power? It resumed the dalliance though in a minor key. 

And finally what can be imputed against the present leader - a weak campaign, some bloopers pointing to a shoddy preparation, focusing more on generating enthusiasm on the Simon Busuttil mode than on proper proposals, the intrusion of non-party members, the suspicion the party was diluting its stances on over-development to become a pale copy of Labour, etc.

The party did attack Labour but hardly ever its weak points in a strategic manner.

And lastly, though there may be others, the party's inner core is still made up of unregenerate hard-liners, who like the Bourbons remember everything and have learned nothing.

It is for these reasons, and maybe others still that the alternative government still cannot make any headway.

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