And then there were four

All the talk about a new PN leader destined to lead the party to renewed glory has come down to a contest between two knowns and two unknowns.

There are more oncehopefuls who have stayed out than these four who have submitted their applications. And curiously, there are more knowns than unknowns among them.

This, I hold, says more about the state of the party than anything else does. They must have looked at Simon Busuttil passing in a matter of days from Hallelujahs to Crucify him! and said to themselves that there, but for the grace of God, go I.

What I find fascinating is the way in which PN keeps shedding people who just disappear from sight. I can draw up a list but people will add more: Joe Saliba, Austin Gatt, Lawrence Gonzi, etc. Labour does not lose people like that.

There is now a big debate about PN returning to its roots, which is shorthand for returning to a conservative stance and kicking out the reforms identified with Simon Busuttil – gay marriage, coalition with Marlene Farrugia and sidelining most whom can be identified with the Gonzi years.

A party that seems to have just one aim: to kick Labour out and replace it in government. All talk about right/left goes out the window especially now that the two parties have become centre parties.

Nor can one say, at least in my opinion and looking at the party from the outside and from some distance, that any one of the four candidates definitely represents one ideology more than the others. This is what probably stopped some of the would-be candidates from submitting their application.

The four, some more and some less, represent specific groups in the PN galaxy but they do so in an incoherent way. It is more people knowing other people than real trends, opinions and ideologies. If one were to ask them for their reaction to a series of problem issues (let us say about migration, about the EU, and so on), they may give a series of nuanced answers but I doubt if widely-divergent opinions.

I therefore have an issue with the method that will be followed in the election. The small number of candidates does not, in itself, express the wide divergence of views inside the party. There is no way for the party delegates to state their opinions and their preferences.

Nor will there be any time for groups to come together and for coalitions to be formed. As I understand it, the party executive or council will choose two from these four and the party delegates will then vote to choose the new leader. In other words, the group that will do the first sifting is different from the group that makes the final choice. The two groups are not co-extensive and do not represent the party grass roots – there is a gap, a dissonance.

Incidentally, there was a proposal to conduct background checks on the candidates but I believe that has not been followed up.

So the end result is that people will be voting on the four personalities as personalities and nothing more. Not on their policies, not on their ideologies, nor on their plans, nor on the people they will surround themselves with. Some are party insiders, with all the positives and negatives that entails, and some are outsiders. Who is to say that an outsider is not what the party needs, and viceversa?

The four candidates are thus reduced to do the rounds of party clubs, go to any village festa that’s handy, and meet people who will probably not be involved in the first and allimportant round.

Some have come up with some specific proposals and maybe the others will do so. The proposals I have seen are mostly generic proposals mainly to do with inner party affairs. Others speak more generically of a regenerated party, about giving a new life to the party media, and so on.

That, I say with respect, is not what people want to hear. They want to hear about a new approach the party will take to make it electable. It does not have to be merely anti-Muscat, or to challenge the Prime Minister and the PL at every step of the way.

It has not gone unnoticed that the party has not commissioned a study about the reasons for the June defeat so far. The last time it did, after the 2013 election, it was soon shelved and forgotten. Alternatively, perhaps someone did not want to commission a report that would have been heavily critical not just of Simon Busuttil but of the party leadership as a whole, that has resigned en bloc with him. If that is the right term, considering the leadership is still present in Parliament and, word had it yesterday, does not intend to resign its MP seat.

The party leader will be chosen under these conditions. There could, should, have been a better way of doing it.

But there must be a reason why the selection of a new leader has been surrounded by so many conditions and pre-tailored choices. To understand that, one has to see, touch and experience the bitter battle just under the waterline between the various groups that stand to gain from the election of this candidate as against the other one.

In a different context, one would wish the election to have been otherwise managed. The first selection will definitely condition the ultimate choice of the new party leader.