After dominating Maltese politics for a quarter of a century, the Nationalist Party has now turned itself into a fossil. Unless drastic measures are taken, its existence and relevance will be at risk. All this is a dark state of affairs for Malta and its fragile democracy.
The PN has made big strides towards relevance by getting rid of its worst millstone, Adrian Delia. The party, however, remains lagging not just in opinion polls but in the most important aspect necessary for any entity to survive. Without a proper financial structure, any organisation, even the most successful and the most innovative, dies.
The PN is in its death throes. It does not generate enough funds to cover its debts. If it were a private organisation it would fold or be made to sell parts of its assets and come up with a proper way forward. It would have to draw up a serious business plan that makes viability possible.
The PN is not lacking in assets. People think its biggest one is its history, its long-term fight to be on the forefront of good governance. History, however, is not bankable. It also does not win you votes, proper admiration or relevance. A party needs proper vision.
Vision cannot be based on what the party stood for or what it achieved in the past. Most people hardly care and the ones who did quickly forget. Vision is for today and for the future.
The biggest asset the PN possesses is its headquarters, which is way too big for its needs. It was designed by some megalomaniac who had illusions of grandeur on the scale of a North Korean dictator. Much of it lies unused and it is slowly but sadly falling into meaninglessness.
The party should sell out, with the new developer giving it a part of the new building to continue using it for its day-to-day administration.
It definitely needs space but does it need that much?
This would only solve a part of the PN’s perennial problem. In its races with the Labour Party, the PN always starts at a disadvantage. Because it is bankrupt it cannot ever compete in glitz, in advertising, in communicating, in data usage, in branding, with the Labour Party.
The PN’s presence on social media – where most modern elections are won – is negligible. And the little it does is old, tired and seems more like something dreamt of by a 1980s marketing wizard.
The PN’s presence on social media – where most modern elections are won – is negligible- Victor Calleja
The PN also has to battle against the onslaught of the national broadcaster, which tries very little to hide its bias in favour of the party in government. TVM and all the rest of PBS are far from fair or balanced. The subtle and not-so-subtle ways that PBS uses to push the government agenda should send shivers down all our spines.
The PN needs to take stock of all this. Many of the monetary problems it finds itself in are all its own doing. They could also be its undoing.
The finance conundrum goes way beyond the PN’s lack of money management. One thing that is unjust, undemocratic and goes totally against the spirit of constitutionality is that, in the past, the Labour Party, when in government, awarded itself assets that added millions to its coffers.
These assets, in the form of lucrative properties, have allowed the party to guarantee its finances for years to come.
The mistakes – or, rather, the looting of state properties – of the past cannot be forgotten. And they cannot be forgiven either. They were made in a past long gone but they gave, and are still giving, a monetary advantage to the Labour Party.
Both parties have been equally profligate in expenditure and amassing of debts. But a long-ago endowment got the Labour Party out of their morass and, therefore, allowed them to surpass the PN in modernising and moving forward; by leaps and bounds.
The PN needs to find ways and means to combat this. Maybe this is pie in the sky but isn’t there any court of law which will judge this as unconstitutional?
It’s like running a marathon and always having to wear a heavy suit of armour while your opponent wears shorts and a T-shirt.
If we do not want to end up in a situation where Labour remains in power in perpetuity, whatever ills, scandals and horrors it commits, the PN needs to find the wherewithal to rise up from its state of non-electability.
Victor Calleja is a former publisher.