“Politics is the art of the possible, the attainable; the art of the next best,” Otto von Bismarck, founder and first chancellor of the German Empire, once said. He had also noted that only a fool learns from his own mistakes because the wise man learns from the mistakes of others.
It seems Nationalist Party and Opposition leader Simon Busuttil has taken the advice of the great statesman, judging by what he told The Sunday Times of Malta in the interview titled ‘When I become Prime Minister…’.
It was bold of him when he said “The ship wasn’t sinking; it was a wreck”, when speaking about the party he inherited two years ago. It shows he knows exactly where he stands and what an uphill battle it is to make the PN electable again.
He did, however, start the interview on a wrong foot when he said he had not been part of the Nationalist administration and, therefore, he was “free to say what was right and wrong”.
One would like to think that a party in power breathes down the administration’s neck not only to ensure that the electoral pledges it made are kept but also to push it back on the right track when it deviates.
Under the Gonzi administration, Dr Busuttil was a very senior PN official, thus he had the duty to make his voice heard internally. For all we know, he might have done so but was ignored, which cannot be discounted since so much wise advice was pushed aside by Lawrence Gonzi and his government. If his warnings were ignored, then there can be no doubt Dr Busuttil has made more than a mental note that, as prime minister, he would need to realise there are more people tolisten to beyond those immediately around him.
He says that the “physiognomy of the party is changing radically” and enthusiastically declares he is moving ahead and wants to take the party with him.
That is the kind of talk disillusioned PN supporters want to hear. But, more so, they would like to see this being translated into concrete action and that may not be so evident yet. Internally, that could be happening but, from outside, things do not appear to have changed that much. That is a challenge Dr Busuttil must face, head on without loss of time.
That Dr Busuttil is heeding Bismarck’s advice that a wise man learns from the mistakes of others is clear in his statement that “we can do so much better than this government and better than we did in the past”.
Joseph Muscat’s Labour Party came to power with its battle cry ‘Mother for all’ but has failed miserably. Its lip service to meritocracy has turned out to be just that, mere talk, and corruption is far from having been eradicated.
When faced with sticky situations involving his party or elements within, Dr Busuttil needs to walk the talk so he would then be justified in declaring that “people can see what I stand for and what Joseph Muscat stands for”, as he said in the interview.
He notes that people have lost faith in politics and that he wants to restore that trust. Dr Busuttil must first do that within the party he leads and then push it onto the national stage. It isno mean feat and he might even have to do the impossible in a political sphere where, usually, the art of the possible prevails.