It is unfortunate that a great party with a long, glorious history of achievements so beneficial to our country forgets its past when tackling modern strategies and internal problems so that today it is utterly in disarray.

The leadership saga has exposed the ineptitude of the PN administration. Following the resignation of its leader after a humiliating political defeat, the party did not have the least idea how to set in motion the process of electing its new leader, and a number of procedural mistakes were made. I shall mention five glaring blunders.

The first was that when requesting submissions for leadership nominations the criteria that an interested member of the party should possess were neither established nor indicated. When private companies and public corporations invite applications for a vacant post, they normally set the conditions that a potential candidate must meet. In addition, applicants are interviewed for their suitability and conformity to standard values. This procedure should have been followed by the PN, but all it took to submit an application was the support of 10 party members.

The second was more serious. Allegations of misconduct were raised by a professional journalist, of which regrettably there is a dearth in our country. Apparently, the party organs were not enough to investigate and establish the truth or otherwise.

An Ethics Committee was set up to investigate but not to decide what action should be taken in case the allegations proved to be true. Instead of focusing its attention on the person against whom allegations were levelled, the committee asked all four candidates to present themselves for questioning.

The impression given was that they could not face the person against whom the allegations were made. In the report submitted by this committee it was established there were serious doubts about one of the four leadership candidates because he did not completely justify himself against the allegations about him.

This brings us to the third faux pas. Since the Ethics Committee was not empowered to recommend what action should be taken it fell upon the party administrative council to pronounce the sentence. Nevertheless, no sentence was ever pronounced.

The outgoing leader remarked that if he had been in this candidate’s shoes he would withdraw from the leadership race.

It was a very poor remark and showed a lack of firmness. Seeing such a wavering attitude the candidate took it upon himself to declare that the Ethics Committee did not find anything wrong that precluded him from continuing to participate in his bid for the party leadership.

Such a contrasting declaration between the Ethics Committee and the conclusion of this candidate warranted that better information be passed on to General Council members and, eventually, to paid members who had the right to choose the leader.

The least the party should have done was take it upon itself to call an urgent meeting of the general council to relay the findings of the Ethics Committee

But nothing of this sort took place.

This gave space to supporters of this candidate to make ample use of the social media to bring to nothing the conclusions of the Ethics Committee. Seeing the seriousness of the allegations, the findings of the Ethics Committee and the candidate’s reaction, the least the party should have done was take it upon itself to call an urgent meeting of the general council and relay to them the committee’s findings.

It was certainly not enough for members to get information from the local media to really grasp the implications of the committee’s conclusions.

The fourth blunder: it was discovered before the election that a voting document had a forged signature. The matter was tackled by the Electoral Commission, which however limited its investigation to that one case and did not try to extrapolate the possibility that that practice was more widespread. It ignored the fact that there were already suspicions of unreliability regarding the official concerned. Later on, it was discovered this forgery was more widespread than first envisaged. The matter was brushed away at the expense of the other candidates. The eventual winner’s legitimacy became extremely doubtful.

The final blunder was the way the party tackled the voting document forgery. It was reported that the Administrative Council accepted the conclusions of its Electoral Commission and the written apology of the party official concerned, in which he pledged to play no part in other party electoral processes to be held this year.

The question rested with a public reprimand. The implications of this state of affairs are many: the official was found guilty and yet had light treatment meted out, possibly because the ‘new leader’ argued in his favour.

No investigation of the extent of the forgery will be undertaken, leaving serious doubts about the new leader’s legitimacy.

In a broader context this shows that the members of the Administrative Council did not want to expose the party to the extent of the manipulation of its electoral process.

The party is not adhering to transparency in tackling its internal problems. Furthermore, there is a glimpse of favouritism in just handing out a light warning to an official whose aim was to boost the chances of the eventual leader at the expense of the other contestant.

No wonder that the World Economic Forum indicated a huge nosedive in Malta’s ranking regarding favouritism and public trust in politicians.

Manuel Borda is an economist and a former Nationalist MP.