PN - through a glass, darkly

The address by Dr Simon Busuttil during the last General Council was an intelligent, painful soulsearching exercise.

He delivered it lucidly both to the fraction of council members present, but presumably also to himself, having possibly realised, in hindsight, that he was the victim of multifarious circumstances. While asking the party to continue being the standard-bearer for honesty, transparency, good governance, etc, he dug deeply, through inference, into those socio-economic Christian Democratic niches that, over the years, constituted the Nationalist Party, ever since its beginnings in the late nineteenth century.

But the problem lies in the heart of the matter. A thorough unfamiliarity prevails with what the party stands for. Some party commentators describe Christian Democracy as an ideology rather than a tenet/belief; seemingly no longer fashionable. Others still believe that the party is essentially a confessionary political group, strictly adhering to outdated conservative religious teachings without acknowledging that even the Church is reinterpreting God’s gospels in such qualified ways that reflect the realities of today’s complex societies.

The roots of Christian Democratic parties in Europe go back to the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, when the Church encouraged Christians and Catholics to involve themselves in politics to act as a shield to socialism and communism and, in later years, as a palisade against aggressive liberal, anti-clerical and socialist programmes. The various Popes believed in the creation of confessionary political parties. But already, back then, individuals like Don Sturzo and the ecclesiastic Murro, interpreting the Rerum Novarum in a somewhat liberal way, considered that there could be a convergence between the social doctrine of the Church and the socialist movement and between the religious spirit and the democratic cause. Following WWII, the Christian movements in France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, Denmark et al were shedding their confessionary pretexts. Conservative Christian groups and others oriented towards socialist and liberal thinking sought to explore convergences, eventually leading to the founding of the European Union of Christian Democrats in 1965.

Pope John XXIII started his pontificate in 1958 in the embryonic years of a united Europe. Unlike his predecessors, the Pope, who had lived among members of the most vulnerable strata of society and who had spent years in poor Communist Eastern Europe, launched the Vatican Council II and, more importantly, encouraged the Christian Democratic parties to responsibly seek to build bridges with the left that in time led to Aldo Moro’s “converging parallels” of the seventies.

Today’s European People’s Party (EPP) is the renaissance of former fragmented Christian and liberal-socialist groupings in Europe. Its origins are those tenets that were enshrined in Christian Democratic philosophy as evolving through time.

The European People’s Party Bucharest Party Platform of October 2012 affirmed the six core values of the EPP: the dignity of human life at every stage of its existence, freedom and responsibility, equality and justice, truth, solidarity and subsidiarity. Values inspired by the Christian Democratic philosophy. Although today’s EPP also includes parties that do not consider themselves Christian Democratic, all member parties of the EPP draw inspiration from these values. (Barend Tensen et al; 2014)

The dignity of human life

is the core – albeit complex – value that transcends to Thomas Aquinas, who had described human beings as having a spiritual soul, endowed with intellect and free will and having domination over himself. Every man and every woman, irrespective of ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, social status, is considered a unique human being who is irreplaceable and free by nature and thus shares the same rights and obligations. The concepts of the human person and human dignity are often influential in contemporary discussions well beyond the religious sphere, for example in philosophy, anthropology and politics. ( JJ S Aguas, 2009). The notion of human dignity can also provide valuable insights into current debates on ethics, life completion, biogenetics and multicultural society.

The value of freedom and responsibility

builds on the notion of human dignity in the sense that freedom means autonomy and responsibility, as opposed to an undesirable dependence on higher governmental authorities. Freedom and responsibility reinforce each other. In the spirit of Aquinas, a person is radically free and has the right and freedom of responsible self-creation and self-fulfilment. (Aguas, 2009). The freedom and responsibility of the Christian tradition provides for a foundation for environmental policy more ancient than the communitarian arguments of the left; the principle of stewardship offers solid ground to justify intergenerational solidarity in the environmental field.

This core principle is also central to the social market economy, the economic model historically favoured by Christian Democratic parties and one that strives to combine a market-based economic system with the provision of social protection and services. This entails a commitment to the protection of individual freedom and the recognition of free entrepreneurial initiatives on the basis of fair competition. (Grabow and M Schäfer, 2011)

The principle of freedom and responsibility implies an overarching vision of the relationship between citizens and governmental authorities and derives the legitimacy of the latter from their ability to establish the appropriate conditions for the personal development of the former. The Christian Democratic approach to government should be viewed as a move away from past imperialist and statist structures and ideologies towards a more normative Christian realisation of the rule of law. (Barend Tensen et al; 2014)

Equality and justice

As enshrined in the Bible, the notion that all men are created equal, sharing the same origin and the same nature, is at the root of the Christian conception of a human being. The importance attached to equality also accounts for the openness of Christian Democratic parties to social justice, and it is evident in their tendency to stress that the state, social partners and civil society are responsible for ensuring social justice through legislation. As to the notion of justice cherished by Christian Democrats, its beginnings are certainly associated with the ancient Christian tradition of natural law, insisting on the natural endowments and rights of human beings as creatures of God. Deprived of its original, religious inspiration in the political and social thinking of the Enlightenment, this notion became the basis of all the solemn declarations of human rights put forward in the following centuries. (EPP Party Platform, 2012).

Subsidiarity

Christian Democratic thinking attaches great significance to the dispersion of state power by decentralisation; first mentioned in the encyclical Rerum Novarum in 1891 and further developed in the encyclical Quadregesimo Anno in 1931. Subsidiarity assumes that people are by nature social beings and emphasises the importance of social groups such as the family, the Church and voluntary organisations as structures favouring the development of the individual and the vitality of civil society.

The concept referred to the empowerment of ‘intermediate bodies’ in society such as universities, industries and families. Kuyper, the founder of the Dutch Christian Democratic Party, stressed that each of these bodies should be sovereign in its own sphere, and strived to prevent politics from interfering unnecessarily with their organisation and functioning. Vertical subsidiarity deals with the distribution of powers between authorities on different levels. Horizontal subsidiarity deals with the limitations of EU and governmental interventions vis-à-vis societal initiatives and leaves room for self-regulation by social actors wherever possible.

Solidarity

The main distinctive quality of the Christian Democratic perception of solidarity lies in its relationship with other principles such as subsidiarity and individual freedom, responsibility and self-realisation. Solidarity simply means protecting those living in poverty and deprivation so as to allow them to stand by themselves and freely make their own decisions independent of permanent government support. Christian Democratic thinking stresses the relative autonomy of social organisations in the context of a plural society and therefore values civil society solidarity through charities. The central aim of state-administered solidarity should be to ensure harmony between various groups and organisations in society, not to eliminate any difference in income and social conditions.

The scope of state interventions aimed at ensuring solidarity is far less limited in Social Democratic thinking and there is a much stronger emphasis on the primacy of politics. Not faced with the limits provided by the principles of subsidiarity and individual responsibility, Social Democracy is comfortable with a much more interventionist state using its powers to eliminate inequality. Instead, the traditional Christian Democratic view of capitalism, as a system of production based on private ownership and enterprise, accepts that various social groups and classes have their own specific and indispensable roles in the division of labour. Cooperation between classes is not only possible, but also necessary and natural.

An overview of the history of the Partit Nazzjonalista would lead one to appreciate better that for many decades it has professed its political action, whether in opposition or in government, focussing on the principle that the individual, endowed with intellect and free will and having domination over himself, aware of his rights to equality and justice, and conscious of his responsibility towards society and rule of law, was himself participating in the development of the environment which he shares with people that may think differently than him.

Applying the EPP’s core principles, which we rarely refer to in our everyday life, had succeeded in creating a socio-economic scenario while institutionalising a “smaller” government that intervenes solely in areas where legislative vehicles were necessary and where solidarity was considered a sine-qua-non. But at no point was a PN government greater than the sum of the pieces of the puzzle, although lethargy at moments in time was evident. One good quality of PN governments was that generally, it could never be called as acting above the law, or that its governmental intervention was a vehicle to hold the individual and society at large to ransom.

To attract more people to the party, it is imperative that people identify themselves with what the party stands for. As was the case with the PL prior to the 2013 elections, the PN needs to embark on an initiative that explains and discusses among its members, councillors and separately to other highranking individuals the core principles of the EPP. Apart from a transfer of knowledge, such groups create cohesion and debate.

While endeavouring to build an election-winning coalition of voters, the PN needs to ascertain that it does not transform itself into a “broad church”, a “big tent” or a “catch-all” party, rendering itself a secular political organisation, meaning that it encompasses any broad range of opinion.

The party has the tools. AZAD was instrumental in the seventies and eighties in promoting the Christian Democratic thinking and how that was gradually reshaping the roots of the PN. This course needs to be revamped. AZAD should also act as a think-tank. It needs to develop its role as a critical friend, supporting the party’s political actions in developing policy without being afraid to draw attention to the omissions or shortcomings of the party.

The above is what distinguishes the Partit Nazzjonalista from the Labour “broadchurch” party.