The race is on for a new leader of the Nationalist Party. Of the four declared candidates, only one, Chris Said, a former Cabinet minister and party general secretary, hails from the parliamentary group, highlighting the difficulties the party is going through at this time.
The other three candidates are Adrian Delia, a lawyer and ‘outsider’ who wants to radically reform the PN and reconnect it to the electorate, Alex Perici Calascione, the PN’s outgoing treasurer, and Frank Portelli, a former president of the PN executive as well as an ex-MP.
Two leading lights within the party who at one time were expected to contest, MEP Roberta Metsola and MP Claudio Grech – both of whom, doubtlessly, have leadership qualities – decided not to run, making the race a poorer one for that.
There can be no doubt that the PN is still struggling to come to terms with its second landslide electoral defeat in a row. The size of the gap was all the more perplexing and hurtful for the party because the electorate largely ignored the corruption scandals on which it campaigned so strongly.
The PN should take heart from the fact that its history is one to be proud of. It presided over Malta’s independence and membership of the European Union and eurozone, it modernised and liberalised the economy and it saved the country’s democracy. However, the Labour Party has now ‘stolen’ many of the PN’s clothes, in particular its business-friendly and pro-EU policies.
The PN now needs to re-articulate clearly what it stands for, as it adapts its core Christian Democratic values to a society becoming increasingly liberal and secular, and attempts to reconcile its liberal and conservative wings. In renewing itself, the PN must reach out, and be seen to reach out, to all strata of society. When Eddie Fenech Adami took over the party leadership in 1977 he did just that, turning the party towards the centre-left and making it a true people’s party. The change worked and the PN won an absolute majority of votes in the 1981 election, although not the majority of seats in Parliament.
The four PN leadership candidates will now be expected to spell out their various visions for the party and country, and explain where they stand on the major issues. How will they deal with a Labour government that has clearly undermined the rule of law? Will they urge the European Union to intervene on Malta’s behalf? How do they intend to strengthen the country’s independent institutions? Do they agree that PN MPs should be given a free vote on ethical and moral questions?
The candidates must also make clear what differentiates the PN from Labour and what ‘red lines’ they believe define what the PN stands for. We hope that the protection of the environment, long neglected by successive governments of both parties, will be taken up by the candidates as one of the fundamental pillars of the Nationalist Party.
PN delegates and members will also need to be told how the leadership candidates propose reconnecting the party to sectors of the electorate that once considered the PN as their natural home, such as the self-employed and the liberal voters, and how the party will improve in getting its message across to voters.
The Nationalist Party, which has been such a powerful catalyst for positive change in Malta over the decades, needs to identify itself with society’s changing needs once again and present itself as a government-in-waiting.
In doing so, it must remain robust in standing up for justice and the rule of law, as the current leader Simon Busuttil continues to do. The PN loses sight of that fight at its own and the country’s peril. A strong Opposition is essential in any democracy, even more so in a country where some of the most important institutions can no longer be trusted to deliver that democracy.