Throughout my years in the Nationalist Party I have seen it re-examine its own precepts, cementing its immutable values and renewing its vision and policy. For decades we were ahead of the times.
The PN prides itself on being on the right side of history whenever it mattered most.
Securing our country’s Independence, joining the European Union, becoming part of the euro zone, liberalising trade, introducing the concept of local government and media pluralism are among the more obvious examples of where the PN stood even if it took years for our political adversaries to take on board what they had vehemently opposed.
Still, there were occasions when we were not. Like every organisation made of people we have on occasion looked back when we should have kept looking ahead.
Sometimes, we looked inwards when we should have looked out.
There is no doubt that, on occasion, we have found ourselves out of step with the ambitions of our people. Relying on our values is not enough. Those will inspire us and hold us true. But on their own they do not prove a capacity to deliver the future the country needs and its people want.
It is, therefore, vital that the PN will always have a genuine open doors and outreach policy.
At my age, you smell a political gimmick from a mile away. But our last general council was no political gimmick. It was a powerful changing of ways, a departure from the tradition of a headquarters-centred politics, to a grassroots movement that harnesses grievances, disaffection, scepticism and apathy not as the annoying distractions we used to perceive them to be but as the fuel that powers politics.
For if politics only serves to create rituals around unreachable ideals, it becomes a cult, an atrophied religion of faint hopes and a priestly self-righteousness that leads nowhere. Politics is not a laboratory science. It is field work. Fields left to fallow must be cleared out, the soil tilled and fertilised, the seeds planted and the saplings nurtured. Patience, care and hard work will yield a harvest.
The last general council reaffirmed core values challenged by a fashionable on-slaught on anything held dear. The PN sees no reason to redefine life. That explains the unanimous vote by our MPs during last Wednesday’s parliamentary sitting. We shall not sacrifice our values at the altar of expediency or ruthlessness as Labour is so prone to do. For us, life starts at conception and ends as naturally as it starts.
In between, the State must ensure respect for its dignity. People; those yet unborn or about to die and every day in between need to find a compassionate society in which to live and enjoy a full life.
Politics has a role in achieving that not by replacing initiative or suffocating the solidarity that comes naturally to most people in families, schools, clubs, work places, unions and everyday life. The role of politics is to recognise that, in spite of all the safeguards of community life, some people risk being left behind or, worse, become the prey of those who would exploit others as a means for themselves to get ahead.
The Nationalist Party sees no reason to redefine life
Political parties sometimes make the mistake of thinking they can always anticipate the challenges that members of our society face. The PN recognises this.
We reflect on our own detachment and seek to make up for it. We realise that our desire to build a future for our country does not alone qualify us to build the right future or to do that on our own.
That is why we are opening the PN to the leadership of young people.
Fifteen per cent of our executive committee will, henceforth, be made up of young people aged less than 30. Their energy, contemporary competence, intuitive understanding of the world today and ambition for the future are needed and have become more than relevant.
We need to be innovative and ahead of our time. While the experience and the institutional memory those who remain young at heart bring to a political party are very useful, we must also have the openness and willingness to try new things and achieve new successes by having young people not merely on board but also an integral part of our decision-making processes.
Our new adolescent branch is not a glamorisation of politics for younger audiences.
We do not seek to package the uninteresting and fake it as the cool. In there lies deceit which no one sees through better than sharp-minded young people. The decision adopted by the PN in its last general council is to have young people not merely speak out but decide together with us how we need to shape our country’s future.
Ask 14-year-olds what they want from their future and they will tell you they want it to happen now.
The PN is growing into the party through which they can achieve that.
Francis Zammit Dimech is a Nationalist MEP.