‘Together for our country’: PN General Council theme

The PN’s General Council will be meeting as from today for a week-long series of discussions, PN Secretary-General Clyde Puli announced yesterday. The theme for this meeting will be ‘Together for our Country’.

Puli will be presenting to the council a report on the Party’s work during the last year. Information on reforms carried out this year, as well as a look forward to where the Party is heading – in view of the upcoming elections – will be included.

He also spoke of the reorganisation within the PN, which is he said is a “work in progress”, something which is on-going and that will be in place by the 2020 general election. He noted that, this year, the PN also had the highest rate of ‘active’ memberships.

The Party had also seen a “substantial improvement” in terms of finances, Puli said, and restructuring of the Party’s media and local council departments had also been carried out during the past year.

He spoke about the new ecounting system, thanking people within the PN for identifying a problem which could have allowed tampering of the system without anyone realising it. The PN also put forward a number of proposals about the system.

Restructuring and reforms were carried out in order to bring more young people into the Party. Last May, the PN passed a motion to reduce the age for Party membership to 14 years. Puli noted that the Labour Party had followed suit just this week.

The PN had introduced a political education programme known as ‘Future Leaders’, with a good number of young people attending, he said. Some of these young people are now working in the party’s media and some in NGOs. Puli said that now a new branch of the PN has been formed for these young people, called ‘Team Start PN’.

This new branch had met yesterday for the first time, he noted, and it will be given administrative functions like all other branches of the Party. Its president will be part of the Administrative Committee, whilst the members will form part of the executive.

As a Party in Opposition, Puli also mentioned a number of initiatives the PN has put forward, including an objection to land being given cheaply in St George’s – referring to the Corinthia project. He also mentioned the Egrant report and the Vital’s controversy.

Puli said that the PN had also put forward proposals, including 80 proposals for Local Council reform, as well as 50 proposals in the pre-Budget document.

He concluded that all the good work carried out will put the PN in good political standing, with a long-term plan that will give the Party a sustainable financial holding and also the “political vigour that one expects from the Opposition”.