On Mothers’ Day they voted to have two deputy leaders, but Nationalist Party councillors also took the chance to discuss the most severe of election defeats.

The strategy has to be different in the south than in the north or Gozo. It requires a lot of work

After a result that saw the PN trail Labour by more than 36,000 votes, and a nine-seat deficit in Parliament, councillors spoke about the causes.

Some offered solutions while others blamed voters for not appreciating the PN’s work in government.

But in the lively exchange, three solitary voices sounded a warning about the PN’s collapse in the south.

They reiterated a message first spelled out by Mario de Marco when conceding victory to Simon Busuttil in the leadership contest.

The south has always been problematic for the PN for social, economic and historical reasons but a breakdown of election figures for the second, third, fourth and fifth districts shows a worsening situation in the past decade.

In the March election, the PN gained 28,441 votes in the four districts, winning only four seats from the 20 up for grabs. It managed 30 per cent of the vote.

This means that in 10 years since the 2003 election, the PN lost almost 5,000 votes, half its parliamentary seats and saw its voter share drop by eight points.

Voter haemorrhage in each of the four southern districts started after the 2003 election and continued until this year.

The biggest loss was in the fourth district, where the PN lost 1,333 votes in 10 years, followed by the third district (minus 1,162).

The results have PN activists like Victor Scerri worried. He was one of the councillors who voiced concern last week.

A former PN president, Dr Scerri unsuccessfully contested the fourth district that includes his birth town Santa Luċija, Paola, Tarxien, Gudja, Għaxaq and parts of Fgura and Marsa.

“There is no doubt that the southern districts were under-represented in the previous five years of Nationalist administration,” he says.

This absence meant the party had less contact with people in districts with the highest population density and particular social conditions, he adds.

Dr Scerri notes that on just the fifth district the candidate line up for the last election included no faces at all from 2008.

While some may interpret this as a sign of change, in a district-based electoral system parties have long depended on personalities with deep roots to ensure success.

The fifth and fourth districts saw some notable changes over the past five years.

In the fifth, party heavyweight Ninu Zammit called it a day while others like grandee Louis Galea were pushed off their perch five years ago by lawyer Franco Debono, who ended the legislature voting his party out of office.

A similar situation occurred in the fourth district where former minister Jesmond Mugliett called it a day after spending five years at loggerheads with the PN leadership.

Herman Schiavone, an expert on the electoral system, says the PN’s hold on its second seat in the third and fourth districts was already fragile five years ago.

In 2008, the Labour Party was only 500 votes away from a fourth quota in the third district and 800 votes away from taking the fourth seat in the fourth district.

Mr Schiavone, who was prevented by the party from contesting the fifth district, believes the PN also suffered when it overhauled its MPs.

But he believes that what happened to the PN in the south was not so different from what took place all over the island.

“The PN had a weak candidature everywhere and the swing was uniform across the board.”

Mr Schiavone says the controversy over the purchase of a power station running on heavy fuel oil at Delimara may have been an issue but he admits that during home visits nobody ever mentioned it as a reason not to vote or vote Labour.

“Obviously, it did not help but the principal issue was that the PN had been in government for too long and the party had to rely almost exclusively on its core vote,” he says.

Freshly installed PN leader Simon Busuttil has reacted to these concerns.

When announcing his shadow cabinet last week, he also set up a parliamentary group committee made up of MPs elected from the south.

Whether this committee will have an impact still has to be seen but Mr Schiavone believes it should not be difficult for the PN to regain the second seat it lost in each of the four southern districts.

“It all depends on what strategy the party adopts. The strategy has to be different in the south than that adopted in the north or Gozo. It requires a lot of work,” he says.

But Dr Scerri issues another warning: he believes the party runs the risk of getting caught up in “a vicious circle” if it does not address the shortcoming of representation in the south.

He explains the spiral: the less the PN is represented in the south, the more it will lose contact with the people and the more difficult it will become to find suitable candidates.

“On a national scale this could lead to having parties with a narrower geographical representation on this tiny island, instead of a more cross sectional social footprint. It is a case of working most where there is most need,” Dr Scerri says.

The numbers do not augur well. The PN’s share of the vote in the south since 1996 reached a plateau of 38 per cent between 1998 and 2003.

Despite a growing voter base, the party has failed to capture people’s imagination.

It will take a lot of work to put the lustre back on to the star, especially with a PN leadership that has no roots in the south.

Dr Busuttil’s first step may be a positive development but it will definitely not have to be the last.

ksansone@timesofmalta.com