The process to elect the new leader of the Nationalist Party will come to an end tomorrow. All that remains is the procedural, yet important confirmation by the councillors of last Saturday’s result.

I will be one of the first to go and pledge, through my vote, my support for Simon Busuttil. On Saturday, during the short speech I gave after the result was announ­ced I urged all party supporters to throw their weight behind the leader-elect. I do so again now.

The four weeks of intense campaigning were the first step in the process of reconciliation that is sorely needed in the party after five years of internal turmoil. This dissent brought pain and wasted precious energy as we strove to lead the country through troubled economic and political waters. We have an opportunity to put all that behind us.

All of us, who have the good of the party at heart, must rise beyond any personal preferences and expectations and accept the will of the majority, as expressed in their vote last Saturday. Our energy needs to be focused solely at bringing about the change that is sorely needed in the party.

The work that needs to be done is both vast and urgent. What is at stake here is not only the good of the Nationalist Party. The country and its democratic process needs a strong opposition to hold the Government to account. The Nationalist Party needs to be again the agent of change. It needs it to be the promoter of new ideas, new policies. It needs it to be the defender of citizens’ rights. It needs it to be the alternative government and eventually to lead the country again. To achieve all this, we need to get our house in order.

If we are to be the voice of those who cannot speak, we need to first find our own voice and make sure we are in touch with the realities of contemporary society. If we want to preach about sustainable operations we need to lead by example. If we want to help transform Malta into a truly European country where diversity is treasured not shunned, then we need to ensure that our Party welcomes differences of opinions. If we want to communicate effectively with the Maltese electorate, we definitely need to rethink our media strategy and operations. These are but some of the challenges that lay ahead, challenges that we need to address while we head towards the European Parliament elections in a year’s time.

The Labour Party will be doing its best to have a repeat of the last election result, possibly improving on it. Our target should be to win the European Parliament elections for the first time. The fact that we are in opposition should be to our advantage. However, we need to act and we need to act fast.

Moving forward, we should be guided by John F. Kennedy’s words: “Let us not seek the Republican answer or the Democratic answer, but the right answer. Let us not seek to fix the blame for the past. Let us accept our own responsibility for the future.”

For decades the Nationalist Party provided the right answers to the challenges and opportunities faced by our country. We set the country’s agenda by being able to read the signs of the time not only in time but ahead of time, and by looking beyond the here and now. We were never afraid to take the right decisions daunting as they may have seen.

We managed to bring about change because people understood what we stood for and trusted us. As members of the Nationalist Party, however, our responsibility is not to dwell on the past, but to move this party and, once we regain the people’s trust, this country forward.

From the meetings I had on the campaign trail, I can safely say that the party has what it takes to rebuild itself. We have the people, we have the ideas and we certainly have the will. All we need is the energy to bind it all together. That energy will now come from the new leadership team headed by Simon Busuttil.

I therefore appeal to all those who believe in democracy and therefore want to see a strong Nationalist Party to come forward. The last thing the party needs is to close ranks. It needs to appeal beyond its core. The party needs to strive hard to earn back the respect not only of individuals, but of factions of society it lost as a result of the party having feared the very changes it brought about.

The party needs not only to reflect the aspirations of today’s youngsters, but to have a politics which is an aspiration in itself to today’s, and even more, tomorrow’s society. In the process the party needs to think, do and talk politics differently.

To do so, the party needs you. It needs you to join us as we start on this journey of rediscovering and re-linking with our roots, rebuilding our party structures while carrying out our role as an effective and credible Opposition to Government.

Mario de Marco is a Nationalist MP.