One of the funniest comments I have heard was from a hard-core PN supporter I met recently. He beamed a smile which beautifully belied the feeling of being thumped and announced that the next general election is only 59 months away as a month has already passed since the last one. Someone more mathematically-minded said it sounds even better if we say one-sixtieth of the time has passed.

To be honest, whatever way one looks at it, the PN are in shambles. Besides the in-fighting—which graciously and thankfully seems to have died down—the party also runs an organisation which sounds as if it is on its knees not just through financial straits.

There is more to the party that is pitifully down. I don’t know what the recent surveys say but how many actually watch Net? Or read the Nazzjon? If it’s just a few thousands maybe it’s time to bid them goodbye or change them, make them relevant and money spinners. I’m no financial expert and I even manage to mangle my own little bills but honestly isn’t it time to see where the money is going and if the message is reaching anyone? If the message that is being sent out is just reaching the hard-core converted, what’s the use? Just to make them more hard-core or is the risk that they too might become switchers a frightening idea?

I think the cliché of thinking out of the box is definitely spot-on here. The last thing we need in this country is an opposition which is not only in the doldrums but also even more cash-strapped than it can possibly cope with. And people saying that Labour were in the same situation, when in opposition, does not solve the PN headache or its cash haemorrhage.

The man—does it always have to be a man?—chosen to lead the PN needs to perform a few miracles or at least he needs to pull a few magical rabbits out of his hat. Even the last time a rabbit crept out of the PN hat, the party was in a terrible state. They were in opposition, demoralised, practically bankrupt, with hardly a vision. Fenech Adami (which nearly literally translates as skinny rabbit) when he became leader of the PN gave dignity to the party, organised its roots and changed its old battlecries to a modern party with a soul.

That soul is rather missing from the PN now. It needs a new change, a new direction. For the sake of the party that has been such a bulwark of righteous deeds and democracy, all people of goodwill—including, I imagine, the switchers and the hard-core labour—hope the PN will become a party that is a capable winner and defender of rights once more. The country needs the PN of old, not an old travesty of it with hardly any teeth.

May the man chosen by the PN councillors be as strong and innovative as the wise rabbit that led the party till 2004. I believe drastic changes should happen—including name, slogan and maybe even, sadly, the emblem with its black background. How can the misnomer of the name—Nationalist—remain?

Or the other canard: religio et patria? Let’s move on, the world is now in 2013. The vision needs to be laid out again, the philosophy made clear. The last thing I would ever want a party to have is just glitz and silly slogans—so deep soul-searching needs to happen, with new ideas embraced and old ones discarded. But it has to be modernised.

There are long days on the opposition benches and it will be next to impossible for the PN to win the next election unless Labour really get it wrong. But 60 months, or 59 or even 119 months, will pass. And the party needs to be ready to govern in an honourable way whenever it is called back to do what it has done so well in these last 25 years.