I should clarify from the outset that I am a great admirer of Simon Busuttil, and as a Nationalist Party member I want the party to win in 2018. To do that, however, the party needs a deeper kind of reform – or give up its electoral hopes altogether. The brutal truth is that despite Busuttil’s genuine efforts, the Nationalist Party is struggling to gain any kind of foothold with electors, and is nowhere near winning a majority in 2018.
People need a reason to vote PN and Busuttil needs to provide them with one. He has four years to do that. Making the party better for its members is not enough.
Pulses will not be raised among the Maltese electorate by changing the party structures. People want to see radical changes in the PN, not only cosmetic ones. They want a fresh set of policies and a fundamental rethinking of its current policies.
The public perception is that some of the PN members, including MPs, are insulated from the rest of society. Whether this is true or not is irrelevant. Perception is everything. The Nationalist Party needs to change, further, in order to beat this perception. A shadow Cabinet reshuffle is long overdue.
For a start, the Nationalist Party cannot afford to keep getting it wrong on issues of fundamental importance, such as gay rights issues. The PN leader would have done well to attended the gay pride earlier this month and make amends with those present for the Nationalist Party’s lack of sensitivity in their regard over the years. It was, in my opinion, a missed opportunity, but it’s never too late for Busuttil to do so.
Of course, it is possible to mount defence for many of Busuttil’s latest decisions – namely, his suggestion for the State to fund political parties, a sensible suggestion, and an effective mechanism to safeguard democracy while putting political parties on a level playing field.
His party’s proposals for drug users to receive treatment rather than face criminal action too are commendable and indicative of a party thinking outside the box.
However, the PN needs to come up with more positive proposals which could give the electorate a glimpse of the PN as an alternative government and challenge the Labour government by setting the country’s agenda from the Opposition benches.
With the Labour Party shifting away from its social democratic agenda, and the PN nursing fresh wounds from yet another drubbing at the polls, workers are unrepresented
The Nationalist Party needs to reach a much wider set of voters, not least the working class. With the Labour Party shifting away from its social democratic agenda, and the PN nursing fresh wounds from yet another drubbing at the polls, workers are unrepresented.
In the near future, Malta may face economic difficulties, and with the government’s dangerous liaisons with communist China, through the privatisation of Enemalta, workers will be the first to be impacted.
The Nationalist Party should, once again, become the natural home of Maltese workers, as was the case in late 1970s and early 1980s when Eddie Fenech Adami’s battle cry was ‘Qalbna mal-Ħaddiema’ [Our hearts are with workers].
Busuttil should adopt this, not as a slogan, but as a policy principle for the Nationalist Party. Wage and income inequality and the thousands of families who are struggling to keep their heads above water is, also, an increasing cause of concern.
The PN needs to come up with a series of continuous, positive proposals on how not only to contain this inequality but to significantly reduce it.
It is a tall order for the PN, because not only does it need to reconnect with the workers but it also needs to become more business-friendly.
Successive Nationalist administrations did an excellent job in liberalising the market but excessive bureaucracy was the order of the day. It stifled investment and frustrated investors, especially small and medium-sized businesses.
A plan to tackle excessive bureaucracy when the PN is returned to power would hit home with the many middle and upper middle class people who deserted the PN in droves.
Welfare reform too is a mammoth task for the PN, as is the need to come up with sensible proposals for a sustainable health sector by providing left-of-centre solutions to them.
Through a fresh set of policies and fundamental rethinking of its current policies, the PN would better its chances of becoming relevant to people’s lives, set the country’s agenda and become, once again, the peoples’ party.