The way forward for Adrian Delia
As rightly noted by The Malta Independent, instead of the media and the Maltese nation analysing the first 100 days of Dr Joseph Muscat’s government, the focus has all been on the PN and the disastrous way it has led its leadership campaign. Rather than r
Dr Simon Mercieca is senior lecturer, Department of History he feeling is that the PN ended up being led by a team whose only interest has been to invalidate the entire electoral procedure. In the process, the PN’s image has suffered and its public position further undermined. It is now clear to one and all that the current team is not capable of leading the party to any electoral victory. This explains Dr Adrian Delia’s victory.
The question is can Dr Delia be the new leader the PN desperately needs? Can he lead the party to victory? There is one political maxim that the new leader of the PN should consider. Power should be given to problem solvers and not to problem creators as has occurred in the recent past. This is the only way forward for the PN to acquire more political muscle.
More importantly, this result shows that the PN needs to modify its internal power structure. New heavyweights are needed. As a former PN candidate who attended a reception organised by the party for those who contested the election of 2017 told me, he struggled to find – among the guests – a political candidate of distinction, one with whom to exchange a word and find vision.
If Dr Adrian Delia wants to win, he needs to build a new form of power. The rules the establishment devised for this leadership election points to the contrary, bringing about more division than unity within the party. It urgently needs a new leader who can re-assess the party’s structures. Work needs to start from re-evaluating its assets. And re-evaluation does not mean selling your family jewels as has been the case over the past four years.
The truth is that the party has now hit rock bottom. Despite the political rhetoric, the party has ended up selling its family jewels, starting with its clubs in the south. A tearful Cospicuan delegate told me that one of the solutions was for the PN to sell its club in Cospicua though he could not understand the logic behind this since what it made from this sale was a fraction of the accumulated debt! The Birgu club is next in line. While social and village clubs in the south are thriving and moving from strength to strength, the PN is the odd one out. As a party, it is not even capable of keeping its clubs open where they are most needed.
The Nationalists of the 2nd district have sent a very strong message to the establishment, who considered them a bunch of ‘’ħamalli”. The paid-up members made their strong voice heard in this election. During the leadership campaign, both Dr Said and Dr Delia have promised to stop selling off party clubs. Moreover, Dr Said showed sensibility towards the South, when he suggested to change the Paola club into a regional centre. I fully support such a proposal.
Selling party clubs is linked to the debt accumulated by the Nationalist Party. While the PN’s administration is insisting that the debt decreased by €3-4 million, reliable sources claim that the debt has actually gone up from €15 to €25 million. Moreover, the administration is telling us that the “ċedoli” or bond system was crucial to decreasing its debt. But the administration forgets that these bonds are simply another form of loan on which interest has to be paid! One of the benefits of this bond system is that the party has saved money on the accrued interest.
There is also the issue of the internal management of the PN finances. I know of individuals whose membership fee never reached the party’s coffers. This indicates that the party infrastructures are not functioning properly. There was no proper checking and control, not even where payment of membership fees is concerned. While the fees paid by the tesserati will not solve the PN’s financial dilemma, having a responsible administration – even where basic money matters are concerned – would be sending a strong message to its subscribers that the PN has finally pulled up its socks.
Moreover, the PN needs to start thinking about power in binary terms. Till now, power was devised as a monolith affair. Vanquished by a liberal agenda, the PN has also been conditioned by the way the party conceives power. Take the issue of sexuality where the PN began perceiving power in nonbinary terms. In truth, this goes against the basic laws of science.
Until recently, power was considered a shared experience by the different factions. Coordinating factions turned the PN into a political powerhouse. The future success of the PN does not rest on recreating this past system. The political powerhouse of the future lies in digital technology and culture. This is why I have been harping on the concept of Religio et Patria. Whether one likes this motto or not, it is imbued with traditional cultural significance and a strong sense of identity. After the vicious attack on the historical identity of the PN by its liberal faction, there is a dire need for a change of direction if the Party intends to survive.
What Dr Delia needs to do is to rebuild the PN on the charter principle. This is the only way the new leader can heal the wounds created by this vicious leadership campaign. The new charter needs to be approved by all members of the party. In support of democracy the party charter should have one important cardinal principle. It should allow freedom of movement. Individuals can join and leave at will without being branded traitors. Members are kept connected through digital networking. This means that the party needs to invest in networking, something that is completely missing in its present organisation. This charter would help the PN become a party of doers.
One last point regarding its members. The PN forgot one basic rule about political parties. When Mazzini created the modern political party system, he was structuring it within the parameters of nineteenth-century politics, led primarily by the Industrial Revolution. Like industries as well as other entities, a political party is a body that gives a service. Modern politicians, however, forget that parties also require services.
Basically, political parties are nothing more than organisations sanctioned by a group of individuals called party members. These members give a certain amount of freedom to an inner elite known as the establishment. The members vouch to support the party establishment at all costs but in return expect the party administration to safeguard their rights and respect their thinking and feelings. When this political exchange ceases to function, then members will stop agreeing amongst themselves and finally they will stop supporting their own party establishment. As a result, the party administration will cease to hold any grip over its members. This is what has happened to the Nationalist Party.
It is appropriate at this point to remind the new leader what Karl Marx had to say about society and political change. Marx observed that if the dominant mode of production that underpins a society is changed, the social and political structure will also change. It was on this maxim that the PN, in the last four years, hankered to adapt to the changes in Maltese society. But this was a wrong working analysis.
In my opinion, the true analysis of this political thought should have been related to the mode the PN was doing politics. It is this mode that the PN has to change, in particular, the way the administration treats its members. Once the behaviour of the party towards its members changes, it will become relevant within the Maltese social context and the electorate. Only then, will its image with the electorate change for the better.