What the PN needs...

As the implications of Saturday’s vote start to sink in, Opposition leader Simon Busuttil must surely be ruing several of the rash comments he made throughout the campaign… such as “use this election to send a yellow card to government”; or, even more bizarrely, “wake up and smell the coffee” (addressed to Prime Minister Joseph Muscat).

Naturally, hindsight of the election result helps to put these comments into perspective. But there had all along been very clear indicators pointing towards an emphatic overall Labour victory. Our polls predicted the outcome with reasonable accuracy; the only area where their predictions went awry concerned the very small parties, and this can be put down to the margin of error of 4%.

The same information was available to both Busuttil and Muscat from the beginning of the campaign, and both also had their own internal surveys which made roughly the same forecast. The only uncertainty concerned the extent of Labour’s national majority; and even this had been approximated in surveys.

It is therefore simply inconceivable that the Opposition leader would deliberately tie this election to a verdict on the Muscat administration, when he knew – or should have known – that the electorate would, by his own reckoning, return an endorsement of government and rejection of his own party.

To be fair, this is not what technically happened. Regardless of the overall result this was primarily a European election, and the primary focus was to elect six representatives to the European parliament. Yet this only makes Busuttil’s strategic blunder all the more serious.

By consciously turning this into an election on local issues – a strategy that only makes sense in the context of certain victory – he also handed a game-winning trump card to Joseph Muscat… who can now comfortably quote Busuttil himself to the effect that the electorate not only failed to show his government the ‘yellow card’, but actually cheered as he scored a goal.

Meanwhile, there are indications that the result may get even worse for the PN. At the time of writing it is still unclear whether the PN will obtain the third seat it gambled so much to win; and there is also a sinister irony in the fact that the PN’s chance of success now depends almost exclusively on the distribution of votes inherited from other candidates, including the far right’s Norman Lowell.

Even if the third seat does go to a PN candidate, it will be cold comfort for a party that had so unwisely tied this election result to the performance of Joseph Muscat’s Labour government over the past year. And all this can only raise serious questions about the PN leadership, which is ultimately what has reduced the once formidable party to an accident-prone shadow of its former self.

This is therefore very much a time for soul-searching in the Opposition party; yet judging by its reactions so far, it seems the PN has not yet taken on board the full implications of the result. Simon Busuttil has now even declared he will not resign even if he fails to obtain his declared electoral target – the sixth seat.

“Now is the moment that the PN needs those kinds of determined people who do not lose heart and who do not run off at the time the party needs them,” he said. “It is normal to be disheartened… but we are not for turning.”

It is ironic that Busuttil would cite “what the party needs” as his reason to stay on at the helm. The result last Saturday sent out a clear message regarding ‘what the party needs’… and also what it doesn’t need. Certainly it does not need a continuation of failed strategies and policies of yesteryear… yet Busuttil himself represents continuity from the past administration.

What the Nationalist Party really needs is a new vision, a new identity that sets it apart from an image that has already been twice rejected by the electorate. It must undertake a root and branch reform that involves a total clean sweep of all the old faces involved in the previous administration, as well as a policy rethink that commits itself to taking stands on issues, while distancing itself from its perceived negativity and the politics of hatred and division.

Failure to reform the party along these lines would not only be undesirable for Nationalists, but also undesirable for the country, as well as dangerous for the democratic process.

The Labour government may now feel its victory on Saturday entitles it to steamroll over any other concerns – and tragically, Busuttil’s own comments would even justify this behaviour. It is therefore incumbent on the Opposition to address its internal shortcomings without delay, in order to a re-emerge as a powerful political force in time for the next election.

This can only be done by pruning away the old branches once and for all, and investing in young blood and fresh ideas. Busuttil has already shown that his leadership is incapable of providing the PN with the new ideas and strategies it needs. There can be little doubt, then, who really needs to “wake up and smell the coffee”.