Yesterday you were one of the speakers who commented on the paper ‘Roots’ that is a sort of up-date of the basic beliefs of the Nationalist Party, the first of the points refers to the Christian inspiration of the Party in the current context of discussions about revising the Constitution, do you think there is a foretaste of some change of the article in the Constitution about the religion of Malta and Church-state relations?

This is probably the first historic opportunity for the PN to make full use of the social media to work out a system of proposals- Fr Peter Serracino Inglott

O ur Constitution states that the Church has the right and duty to express its views on ethical issues. This does not appear to be attributing any special role to the Church, but it could be taken to be a similar provision to that of the European Union which requires the political authorities of the Union to dialogue with both the representatives of the various religions as well as with exponents of philosophical traditions that are not religious.

The point seems to be that the state, when it is confronted with decisions that raise major moral issues, should consult those institutions which are deemed in the relevant cultural context to be the depositories of the accumulated moral wisdom of that cultural tradition. This seems to be an important acknowledgment of the role which our nation wishes to attribute to civil society in conjunction with the democratically elected representatives of the people.

Recognition of this dialogue was in fact what Pope John Paul II was most insistent on when speaking to me personally as the Nominee of the Maltese government at the European Convention which was drafting a Constitution for the European Union.

The Church is recognised as not just having status of any non-governmental organisation but as the bearer of the witness to the accumulated moral wisdom of the centuries that consequently deserves a special hearing.

I do not see that there is any impellent need to alter these provisions.

In the listing of values the traditional Christian Democrat pattern has been followed, so that solidarity and subsidiarity are mentioned. Do you have any comments on this?

At the European Convention I proposed that instead of defining subsidiarity in terms of a hierarchical structure, one should do it in terms of a network. Instead of saying that decisions should not be taken at a higher level than the one closest to where the impact of those decisions would be mostly felt, one should say that the decisions ought to be taken where there is most information.

I am not at all convinced that there has been any really thorough discussion of these issues even though it is clear that decisions taken at the European level are bound to loom more largely as time goes on.

It does not seem to me that there has been any clear confrontation of different opinions even with regard to the most specific proposals that are being discussed for there to be better control of member state economies in order to find a happy way out of Europe’s present difficulties and to prevent their recurrence.

There is the feeling throughout Europe that matters are being handled too much in bilateral discussions between Germany and France with all the rest of us having their views hardly heard at all.

The result is that such issues, as how much can the control of the economy be left in the hands of the financial institutions, or whether there should be efforts made at the European level in order to ensure that the new electronic civilisation, be organised more on a cooperative rather than competitive model.

Indeed, what I would have liked to see elaborated more fully in this document are the policies that Malta should be pushing for at the European level.

Yesterday’s discussion focused on the part of ‘Roots’ that dealt generally with values. Working groups have been set up to discuss 10 topics that are more specific in nature and that presumably are closer to the more concrete and practical proposals that one can expect to feature when the PN comes round to formulating its electoral programme. Are you expecting that there will be more active participation by people not necessarily card-carrying members of the PN in this process of translating what had originally appeared as Lawrence Gonzi’s vision of Malta in 2015 into a more action-oriented manifesto?

This is probably the first historic opportunity for the PN to make full use of the social media to work out a system of proposals of which the electorate itself could assume ownership.

An extremely valuable contribution to this end has already been made very notably by Mario Tabone. His projection of how Malta could manage to get over the last remaining major constriction on our development, our small size, was sketched out by Tabone in the previous AZAD’s seminars, but a more comprehensibly worked out version of his ideas has now become available for all to study and reflect upon in greater detail.

I hope that the 10 working groups that will be engaged in this critical task of moving from basic beliefs to specific action plans will give close attention to Tabone’s ideas which I consider to be an admirable spelling out of what was the core of the Gonzi 2015 vision.

Of the other relevant material that I have seen so far presented for our reflection, I need hardly repeat that in my view the paper on Open Source Software is the other essential complement to Tabone’s discussion.

I am looking forward to reading discussions of these two most stimulating and thought-provoking statements especially by the younger set of participants in discussions of Malta’s future that I have been listening to in various forms that seem to be taking shape as we get closer to the beginning of the electoral campaign.

Fr Peter Serracino Inglott was talking to Margaret Zammit.