Prime Minister Joseph Muscat spoke, during one of his Sunday political sermons, about political fatigue, but it took one, battered from the polls, Opposition leader to take the bull by its horns and do the people a favour by putting an end to the Sunday political sermons. Kudos to Simon Busuttil; fingers crossed Muscat will follow suit.
The Nationalist Party is synonymous with dialogue. The Sunday political activities, djalogi, became synonymous with the PN especially in the 1980s when the party was struggling to establish democracy and free speech in Malta, and from the mid-1990s up to 2004 when it secured Malta’s place in the EU. Following that, the Sunday political sermons started to lose their relevance.
The Sunday djalogi are, usually, monologues of the PN leader preaching to the converted. The Sunday evening news is littered with these political events. Not that the ‘converted’ are not important for the PN. However, the PN’s core vote, which represents around 40 per cent of the electorate, is far from enough for the party to regain the people’s trust.
The Nationalist Party needs to reach out to the thousands of young men and women who, today, see no reason why they should vote for the party that secured Malta’s place in the EU; and thousands of others who, since the early 1980s up to the 2004 general election, voted PN but have, since then, abandoned the party in droves.
Busuttil’s decision to put a stop to the Sunday political sermons raises hopes that the PN is thinking outside the box
The PN does not reach out to the latter through Sunday political sermons but through radical changes in the way it does politics and by the party understanding the rapid changes taking place in society. And Busuttil seems to have realised this. Of course, Busuttil’s sensible decision to put a stop to the Sunday sermons is no excuse for the Nationalist Party to take Sunday mornings off. The Nationalist Party is in crisis, and a party in crisis cannot afford to take time off – not even during the long hot days of summer.
What Busuttil and his men and women need to do, badly, is to meet people and listen to their grievances, aspirations and challenges. In other words, Busuttil and the rest of the Nationalist Party need to talk less and listen more – not least on Sundays, but without any organised events by the party, political speeches and statements, news cameras and photographers. They simply need to take time to listen to people in a relaxed and informal manner.
Time and effort needs to be employed in making the Nationalist Party the broad coalition it once was – until it shot itself in the foot when it decided to take a stand against the introduction of divorce, and recently by abstaining on the Civil Unions Bill. Both decisions alienated thousands of voters, not least young voters.
Instead of wasting precious time delivering Sunday sermons, the Nationalist Party’s leadership should now take the opportunity to mingle, not least on Sundays, but without being intrusive, with people from all walks of life and political backgrounds to understand better the elector-psyche, understand what makes them tick and what their aspirations and challenges are.
It’s a tall order for Busuttil’s PN. The Nationalist Party does not deserve to be in the shambles it currently is.
Busuttil has mountains to climb – so far, and despite his genuine efforts to rebuild the Nationalist Party, the new PN leader has failed to persuade the people that his party can be trusted with the government again. However, his is a five-year project, and if Busuttil implements the changes necessary to turn things round for his party he stands a good chance of returning the party to its former glory. Time is running out for Busuttil and the Nationalist Party, and unless it really starts thinking outside the box and changes, radically, the way it does politics, it faces at least another decade in Opposition.
Busuttil’s decision to put a stop to the Sunday sermons raises hopes that the Nationalist Party, after another trashing at the polls, is finally thinking outside the box. This is the first step – small but significant – and augurs well for the changes that Busuttil is promising, and which he has no choice but to implement without undue delay.
Frank Psaila is a lawyer and presenter of the TV programme Iswed fuq l-Abjad.