The relative silence of the Nationalist leader and leader of the Opposition is the first brick in the laying of new foundations for the Nationalist Party. The fervent hope is to retain the party’s old principles but wrap them up in more appealing paper.
That is part of the objective to restructure the PN away from its despair at being swamped in the March 2013 general election, and then again in the European Parliament election of a few weeks ago.
One brick does not indicate what the new structure will look like. Drawing plans have been and continue to be suggested, but none have been published yet.
Assuming, that is, that there is an ongoing effort to draw up such a plan.
That would require, in the first instance, an analysis of the massive defeats suffered in the space of a year, the second one more so since it was expected to reflect some disenchantment with the Labour government that swept in last year.
Yet the PN leader has insisted that – unlike in the past – no somewhat independent unit has been appointed to draw up a critical report.
That is not to say that no internal self-criticism has been made. If the part of it that has been externalised is anything to go by, the internal situation is, in the words of blunt critics, in shambles.
That may please the Labour government and party. It should not please the people at large.
They require an articulate Opposition, no matter what its size, to monitor the government and offer alternatives in a democratic clash and contrast of ideas.
The trouble with the Nationalist Party is that it did not admit its mistakes in government and learn from them.
Some say that the defeated Nationalist government suffered too much internal division.
It certainly did and the leader could not manage it satisfactorily.
But such division did not account for many of those who deserted the PN and voted Labour for the first time. They did so largely because of the arrogance shown by the party when in office.
Expect an admission that we are in the 21st century by copying Joseph Muscat’s Labour Party
That debilitating, disgusting arrogance has not been admitted.
Rather, the party elected a new leadership consisting of a troika from which the leader did not stand out, whatever his personal qualities.
Worse still, it did not start building and projecting itself as an alternative government, ready to criticise the actual government while shaping a new programme of its own. Instead, it chose to be as negative as can be.
Moreover it did not capture a presentation of public unity, where the liberal and conservative wings of the PN found it possible to co-exist sensibly.
Their co-existence, instead, made the Opposition, and particularly its leader, seem indeterminate, weak and outdated.
These failures, those carried forward from governing and others built up in Opposition, will not start going away with simplistic gestures like saying never on Sunday.
Voters are not much impressed, anyway, by the tedious repetition of the Sunday preaching to the converted.
Nor will appointing a CEO to look after internal business matters bring back deserters.
The person might give the PN financial sense and come up with ideas on how to start paying off its accumulated arrears. That does not win votes, though for the party it would be a plus factor.
Expect also a facelift, a new flag, maybe a modern anthem. In short, an admission that we are in the 21st century by copying Joseph Muscat’s Labour Party.
How a party looks is relevant. More important still is how it acts.
The Nationalist Party will have to dig deep to try to find a seam that will enable it to be a proper opposition with its own set of differentiating ideas.
For the time being, Muscat has stolen its thunder.
It will take much more than silence to bring a reasonably sounding voice back.