The only way is change

These are challenging times for the Nationalist Party, and especially for its leader, Simon Busuttil. So far the former MEP has put on his best face to countenance an election result that fell considerably short of expectation: consoling himself that the main objective – the third seat – was duly obtained, even if the PN had to work harder for it than was generally expected.

But behind the façade of muted satisfaction lies a much deeper malaise. Not even a third seat in the European parliament can atone for the fact that the PN has now receded even further into the electoral wasteland following its dismal March 2013 result.

The result, on a nationwide level, indicates what many within the party itself are now openly declaring: that support for the Nationalist Party has actually dwindled in the 14 months since it lost an election by 36,000 votes.

Needed: humility

David Griscti, chairman of the AZAD foundation – a think-tank founded by the Nationalist Party in 1976 – voices the concerns of many within the PN when he urges the party to “flush out all the old faces and renew itself completely.” Part of this renewal, he indicates, may have to take the form of an act of contrition.

It is clear from the election result, he says, that the old strategies favoured by the PN are out of synch with what the people want. “The PN has to have the courage to acknowledge that confrontational politics are no longer ‘in’. People don’t want it, they respond negatively to negative campaigning.”

Griscti argues that the party is still haunted by the spectre of former activists who had fallen out of favour in recent years. Even if some of the mistakes were made under former leadership, the PN has yet to atone for the “shameful” way it treated some of its own exponents in the past.

“The policy of assassinating people through the media is unacceptable,” he asserts. “It is the sort of strategy that is only utilised by people who have no idea of the psyche of the population.”

As an example he refers to the case of John Dalli – the former finance minister who fell from grace into scandal as EU Commissioner. “The way he was treated as an individual was unacceptable and undignified. Whatever you make of his performance as Commissioner, Dalli was a star of successive Nationalist administrations. He was the brain behind modern Malta’s economic system. As finance minister he oversaw the transition from an offshore centre to a very successful financial services hub…”

The way he was attacked and humiliated – “kicked when he was down” – was not only degrading, Griscti argues, but also served as an ominous warning to others: this is how the PN treats its own people. “Who would want to come forward with ideas and proposals under these circumstances? Most sane people would stay well clear.”

The same attitude, he adds, also contradicts the PN’s core values. “How does the PN’s treatment of its own critics compare with the supposedly fundamental Nationalist principle of respecting the dignity of every human being? In the end they only managed to alienate and marginalise people. They left no space to express internal criticism. The PN was reduced to the same, boring, grey people.”

While Busuttil himself may not be directly linked to this strategy, it is still incumbent on him as PN leader to apologise to the many people his party pushed away. “Busuttil inherited a party fraught with infighting, but he still has to take responsibility for the mistakes. The PN has to have the humility to apologise to the people it antagonised; to acknowledge that the way it treated them was wrong.”

Underestimating Muscat

It is not just party insiders who were subject to a backfiring strategy of consistent public ridicule. The PN’s traditional treatment of its political adversaries also appears out of synch with electoral reality. Yet it has not changed in any discernable detail since Simon Busuttil took over the leadership.

Michael Falzon, a former Nationalist minister under Eddie Fenech Adami, argues that the PN’s underestimation of Joseph Muscat was a recipe for electoral disaster.

“The excessively hysterical attacks at every perceived false step on the part of the Muscat administration have dented further the PN’s credibility rather than Muscat’s,” he points out in an article today. “Discerning voters cannot stand the attitude that seems to imply that whatever the PN did in government was right while whatever Muscat does in government is wrong. They cannot stand the attitude that the PN is necessarily superior and that its performance in government was beyond reproach.”

Falzon reasons that by consistently minimising the persona of Joseph Muscat, the PN not only failed to pick up warning signs from the electorate, but also succeeded into deluding itself into believing its own propaganda: with tragic results that were reflected in last Saturday’s vote.

“For the PN to stand a chance of beating Muscat, it has first to shed its prejudices and look at things objectively. It has to acknowledge – and respect – his intelligence, his shrewdness and his capability for using the right tactics in the right moment, rather than dismissing him as some inferior politician.”

Inconsistency

Yet another point raised for internal discussion concerns regular inconsistency on individual issues on which the PN has tried to take a stand. David Griscti believes the party has to stop sending out mixed messages on social issues. “We already saw this inconsistency when the PN tabled a private members’ bill to amend the Constitution to safeguard minority rights, and then abstained on a civil unions bill...”

But at the same time, the AZAD chairman adds that you can only expect inconsistency when a party struggling to reinvent itself still fields all the same defeated generals in key positions. “How can you have the same former cabinet ministers of the Gonzi administration still shadowing the same portfolios today? Still talking about the same issues over which they themselves were rejected by the electorate in 2013?”

To successfully change course at this late stage, the party urgently needs to invest in new people and fresh ideas. But this can only be achieved if it overturns the widespread perception that it is still run by a hidden ‘clique’.

“There are many examples but the one that sticks in my mind – not because it is more important but because it says so much about the PN’s attitude – was a demand by Marsalforn restaurant and café owners to be allowed to put out tables on the promenade around Santa Marija time. For years they begged to be given this simple concession, and for years the answer was always ‘No’. Labour came into power and granted them permission within months...”

It may sound like a trivial complaint, but Griscti points out that the same attitude prevailed across the board, and created an overwhelming impression that the government was simply protecting vested interests, or otherwise uninterested in fostering private initiative.

“Even after the defeat, people approaching the PN with good ideas were often told: ‘No, sorry, this is not the right time…’. Excuse me, but if this is not the right time, when is?”

Busuttil: stay or go?

For all this, internal PN opinion seems to be divided on the question of whether Busuttil himself – who was deputy PN leader in the administration that was rejected in 2013, and who also authored the failed manifesto – should be among the old faces to go. Nobody within the party has publicly demanded his resignation following the election debacle; though many found it significant that this most conspicuous defender to date has been none other than Lawrence Gonzi: arguably the architect of most of the abovementioned flaws within the PN.

However, David Griscti also defends Busuttil in his role as party leader. “I genuinely believe Busuttil is the right person to carry out the necessary reform. But it was big mistake for him to take on the deputy leadership [in December 2012]. I don’t doubt he did it out of a sense of party loyalty, but as a result he is now viewed as a continuation of the previous administration, when continuity is the last thing the party needs…”

Echoing many of the stated concerns at a PN executive meeting last Thursday, the AZAD chairman expects Busuttil to respond to the challenge not by stepping down, but by being more of his own man, more courageous in his decisions and less apparently enthralled to a coterie of invisible people controlling the party.

A similar view is taken by professor Joe Friggieri – himself a former PN candidate, but also a regular contributor to the PN’s internal debates and discussions – who summed up the required direction with typical aplomb: “The first thing the PN should do is try to understand what it stands for. It should talk less about values, by which it usually means traditional values inspired by the party’s slogan, and concentrate on drawing up an action plan that would allow it to reach a wider cross-section of the population, including the young.

"It needs to get to grips with the profound changes taking place in Maltese society and stop preaching to the converted. Its means of communication need a radical overhaul.”