It is becoming more and more evident that the problems faced by the Nationalist Party do not stem from its electoral defeat in June. The terrible spectacle in Parliament on Wednesday, where leading Nationalist MPs failed to support a motion moved by their own party, reflects the sad morass that is the Opposition.
To be fair, this identity crisis is not the making of just the new party leader, Adrian Delia, but it is up to him to solve. The problem can be traced back to 2011 and the divorce referendum. The PN, in government then, failed to see that the country had changed and that its support base favoured divorce. It has been on the way down ever since, culminating in the 2013 electoral defeat and repeated earlier this year.
It has truly become an existential question for the PN, a situation wholly exploited by the Labour Party. Prime Minister Joseph Muscat branded the PN parliamentary motion as “fundamentalist”, driving the message home that the PNis regressive.
Badly bitten by his handling of the Civil Unions Act, former PN leader Simon Busuttil tried to make amends by adding gay marriage to his 2017 electoral manifesto.
Like the election itself, it came across as a rushed job, as evidenced by Nationalist MP Edwin Vassallo who would not endorse gay marriage when brought before Parliament.
The party, in its vast majority, voted for gay marriage, opening the door to a myriad of ethical and moral issues it will now have to face. Labour will make sure the controversies do not stop and, more likely than not, the PN will emerge the loser, looking dishevelled and disunited. Labour, inversely, comes across as robust and determined.
That does not mean all is quiet within its ranks. Equality Minister Helena Dalli’s failure to make it to the post of deputy party leader has been attributed to her gay marriage agenda. But Labour remains united because power and success keep it compact.
One day, Labour too, will go through the same crisis as the PN when it would look back and realise that it is Labour no more. Values have been substituted by money and all it will have left to show is a country without a soul.
Dr Delia must deal with the PN existential problem with urgency. The issue of gay marriage and the right to IVF is not a technicality, as he would try to make people believe. He has inherited a situation that will run more and more out of control as his party comes face to face with ethical issues that require intense debate. The solution is not a free vote. That would only mean the PN is unable to face issues head on.
He must revisit the PN’s Fehmiet Bażiċi (statement of basic policy). The new PN leader needs a coherent party behind him. Party values must be clear and not blurred by fashionable liberal policies that risk disintegrating society.
Dr Delia’s predecessor had clear policies on good governance and independent institutions and has been proved right by the fallout from Daphne Caruana Galizia’s murder. It is now up to Dr Delia to extend those policies to ethical issues that will arise again and again.
Clarity on values, more than anything else, would bring the votes back.
This is a Times of Malta print editorial