Wanted: A brain transplant

I must be one of the few people in the media circus who reads attentively and addictively what is being said in the plenary sessions of the Nationalist Party being held this week. Interest in politics is at an all-time low even with journalists. And reading what Robert Arrigo, David Agius and Kristy Debono had to say, I am not at all surprised that the public is unplugged from this general state of political affairs.

There are of course the pleonasms perfected by politicians, which most of the time runs likes this: We want solidarity, solidarity with the underprivileged, solidarity with those left behind by Muscat, solidarity with all those who have been ignored by Muscat…

David Agius, one of the two deputy leaders, went into this amazing verbal exercise of suggesting that the Nationalist Party had a vision and offered an alternative because it had four main pillars to its vision. In fact, I counted five – the protection of life, living decently, solidarity with those in need, the quality of life and our identity.

Apart from the hopeless communication skills and delivery, the five items are basically covered and addressed by the Muscat administration.
Agius has no chance in hell of leaving an impression on anyone when he laments about living decently or the quality of life, neither does he have any chance of enticing any voters when he talks about the protection of life.

We all know that Muscat is vehemently anti-abortion and as we all know there is no radical abortion movement in Malta – the only inroads on the subject were made by the Women’s Rights Foundation and their manifesto, and AD candidate Mina Tolu, who is asking for a discussion. Nothing more!

On solidarity and all those noble considerations, Muscat has the knack of targeting pockets of society and dishing out goodies in a way that not even a rocket scientist with the PN would come up with. Which leaves us with that last pillar of principles bandied about by Agius: he labels it our identity.

This smacks likes something out of a 1923 essay from a psychotic World War I corporal. Our identity… as in, the presence of so many foreigners in Malta is denting our Maltese culture perhaps? (Which begs the question, what is Maltese culture and identity to the Nationalist Party?)

The big problem with the PN is very simple – there is no vision. There is no stand on anything. Well, apart from the opposition to the Corinthia project, which is understandable considering the fact that so many speculators and contractors were knocking on the door of the PN to counter the proposed development because their gallant enterprise to deform the Maltese landscape was being threatened (not to forget that Corinthia presented the PN with a chance of healthy donations).

The fundamental problem with the PN is that they offer major differences to the Labour administration, apart from being a very pale shadow of this administration and lacking someone at the top who can lead.
Let us look at some of the salient considerations.

The Gozo tunnel: the PN does not counter this proposal. It goes along with Muscat on this.

Hunting and trapping: the PN is in agreement with more of this; indeed Antonio Tajani’s spokesperson Peter Agius – currently running for MEP – goes further and says that the PN will make hunting and trapping more permissible.

Roads: the PN says that it does not see the widening of roads as a solution. But nowhere does it say what it would do differently apart from sitting on projects like the Kappara flyover and wait for the proverbial manna to fall in their laps.

Education: Here again, there is a lot of talk, but you really find nothing new, no fresh ideas on education, just talk on “building one new school every year”…

Pensioners, family, children, investment, even on Malta’s IIP… there is lots of talk but no discernible difference on what the PN wants to do.
It is only on the question of foreigners that we can uncover a variance, a frail attempt by the PN to do a Salvini, to raise some nationalistic fervour in the Maltese public… and this too will fail while most entrepreneurs (for the wrong reasons) depend wholly on the foreign work force to oil their business enterprises. And no one can imagine what they would do without them.

Needless to say, I have left the corruption card out. When it comes to preaching, the PN does not have the right credentials to talk of bad governance because of its track record. Which means that only a new leadership team without that baggage can spearhead such an important political issue with some success.

The writing is on the wall. And the PN is in need of two major transplants – one of the soul and the other of the brain.

The PN needs to finds it soul. It cannot do this by harking back to the past, and reconstruct a future based on rhetoric. And it needs a brain because it lacks the right human resources that come together in politics not only because they lust for power, as is the case with Adrian Delia, but because they do not have a dream.

No one is contesting that we need an opposition, but an opposition for the sake of an opposition is not good enough. This country needs a dynamic political grouping that can map out a blueprint for the future, and one that pays dividends to its people and this country.

You don’t do this when you haven’t yet discovered your soul and don’t have the grey matter to project your vision.