Life is all about choices! That’s what the cliché states, but are all choices straightforward and simple?

Hardly, I hear you say. But if we reflect on that question we will realise that really and truly, choices are indeed rather simple to make, so long as we are logical in our approach and so long as we remain true to ourselves and our values.

The Nationalist Party is facing an important choice over the next week or so, a choice that will not only elect a new leader but that will define where the party wishes to go, what it stands for and whether it will remain true to itself or not.

It is also a choice that will determine what example it wishes to give to the younger generation and whether it can be a credible alternative to the current government, or whether it will become just a different side to the same coin.

The underlying values, perhaps not spoken about enough, that have always attracted people to the Nationalist Party are those of decency, honesty and integrity, values that it has always tried to uphold, for good and for bad.

These values, together with the credibility and integrity of its leaders, have been handed down from the days of the party’s Gozitan founder Fortunato Mizzi and they have been the guiding light, the northern star for the party’s great leaders.

On this decision hinges the vote of many thousands who don’t view politics like football, who don’t swear loyalty to a flag but to their values

These enduring values also lie at the very heart of the bond that exists between so many voters and the party itself. They may be relatively disinterested in politics, they may be turned off by the nastiness of political discourse, they may even have been bitten once or twice by overzealous Nationalist politicians, but they keep on voting for the party precisely because of this bond and those values, which distinguishes the Nationalist Party from Labour.

For many, like it or not, it has become a case of the better of two evils, with that bond epitomised by those values trumping it for the Nationalist Party.

The party is now faced with a fundamental choice, a choice that is being portrayed as a simple ‘new lamp for old’ choice by one camp but which in reality is far more fundamental and far-reaching. It will affect the raison d’être of the Nationalist Party and how it is considered by a very significant segment of our population. It is a decision that will either signal the moral, or should I say amoral, alignment of the Nationalist Party with a clearly amoral and happily abusive Labour Party, or signal a gritty determination to change and adapt, yes, but without abandoning the values of decency, honesty and integrity that have always attracted many thousands to the party.

The decision will signal whether the Nationalist Party retains its moral compass or whether it will succumb to flashy marketing and staged ‘logic’, in the process accepting defeat at the hand of those forces out there that advocate a kumbaya style ‘go-with-the-flow’ society, in which everyone does as he pleases with impunity and in which those who abuse the system are glorified and ‘respected’.

On this decision hinges the vote of many thousands who don’t view politics like football, who don’t swear loyalty to a flag but to their values, who don’t call an apple a banana. These are the exact same people who for many years, probably since 1987 and perhaps even before, have always voted PN because in their eyes it stood for decency, honesty and integrity.

These people saw the human flaws during the Nationalist years of government but they continued to vote for the party because they felt in their bones that it was the better of two evils.

If this bond is broken then so are their psychological chains and they will feel free to look elsewhere – and who could blame them?

Faced with this choice, all those who know what it means to fight for decency, honesty and integrity, and who remember just how hard and bravely people fought for our rights before 1987, should keep a few simple questions in mind. What would Nerik Mizzi choose for the party right now to ensure that it remained true to its value of decency? What would Giorgio Borg Olivier choose for the party right now to uphold its value of honesty?

What would Eddie Fenech Adami choose right now to guarantee the integrity of the Nationalist Party and its leader? I am sure that you will all reach the same conclusion: they would have chosen ‘the right way’!

David Griscti is president of the AŻAD Foundation.