Another leader to be chosen, and, once more, we need to cross the river Pundit, with its effluvium of recycled platitudes, inessential distractions and impossible desiderata.
In what cave of the Himalayas can Adrian Delia or Bernard Grech quickly train to become the yogi who can keep both feet and ear to the ground but eyes firmly on the horizon while his nose sensitively sniffs the winds of change?
Where is the Tai Chi master who can teach the winner of the PN leadership race to stand firm by his principles while moving flexibly with society? The US consultancy that can impart the strategic vision of Bill Gates, the political cunning of Bill Clinton and the oratory of Barack Obama?
Left to your own devices, would you ever have guessed that the new leader must balance the needs of the environment and the economy? Have policies based on evidence rather than cherry-pick the evidence to fit the deals already reached? Resolve to invest in education and the police because – brace yourself for the news – children are our future while unsolved crime, in the age of mass constant surveillance, can almost become a thing of the past?
Then there is the temptation to comment on leadership elections as spectacle, which is how they appear in the media. But the criteria of spectacle aren’t necessarily the most essential, politically.
Adrian Delia is not without political qualities but leadership and judgement are not among them- Ranier Fsadni
John F. Kennedy, Bill Clinton and Obama were all orators. But JFK found it difficult to get legislation passed. Clinton never won an absolute majority of the presidential vote. Obama’s oratory never helped anyone else but him win an election. His political party lost both midterm elections while he was president, and his support didn’t help Hillary Clinton in 2016.
Did someone say charisma? It’s real but a politician doesn’t bring it to the table. It’s the followers that project it. Up until he became prime minister in his 60s, no one considered Winston Churchill to be prime minister material. Even on winning the 1979 general election, Margaret Thatcher was believed to be a one-term premier.
Plus, there’s charisma and charisma. When we talk of unifying charisma, it’s the charisma of celebrity that we have in mind – the telegenic charm that makes people likeable. In politicians, however, charisma is divisive. Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, Obama, Donald Trump: all charismatic but also polarising. Their ability to attract voters across the party divide also repels many who are nominally on the same side.
So all these people looking for a unifying charismatic figure to lead the PN are looking for the wrong thing at the wrong time.
Political charisma is a quality that combines empathy with power. Until the PN, as an organisation, is ready to exude purposefulness and an ability to be competitive in a general election, none of its leaders could possibly be charismatic — except in a Charles Manson way, as head of a sect.
Which brings us to the evidence and how this leadership election is being discussed. Delia is described as an orator. Really? The man who persuaded every NGO that he gave a racist speech not because of anything he said but because of the way he said it?
Delia is a politician who, in a matter of two years, managed to obtain only two-thirds of a general council vote in which he was the only contestant.
It took Labour’s Alfred Sant 11 years, two general election defeats and two other contestants in a leadership race to score so low.
Delia is not without political qualities but leadership and judgement are not among them. Only someone who thinks politics is a branch of American wrestling would give the barking speeches he does, call upon voters’ pity (as when he said that he sacrificed everything for the PN and sometimes wept alone), while at other times uses the rhetoric of a lover (the Hallmark card verses on his Facebook page).
It works for some leaders of small parties in perpetual opposition, which can afford to have a leader whose brand – to the rest of the electorate – is that of a jester. But the leader of a party of government has to be someone understood to be fundamentally serious.
In practical terms, by promising ‘new people’ he’s really saying that, if re-elected, the PN will depend more on his judgement – the same judgement that has proved poor, repeatedly. His idea of unity is of imposing obedience to the leader. And the kind of people who will prove willing to fill the available places will be the kind to share that view.
It’s a view that turns things on their head. The first essential challenge – the task so necessary that nothing else is possible without it – is for the PN to become a learning organisation again, sufficiently connected and attractive to society that it attracts a wide variety of members, not just many of one type.
It needs a leader who understands that unity is a relationship that needs to be built, not imposed. Vision follows from this; it does not precede it.
Whether Grech can manage this is still to be seen. But he’s certainly showing he understands it.
Delia shows no sign he does. He thinks he’s on Malta’s Got Talent as a magician. On open stage, before our eyes, he has put the PN in a box and sawed it in half. He realises now that the saw was real. So he’s cursed the roadies, tipped us a wink, called for a new box and a new lady.
And he’s assuring the audience that, if he gets their vote, he’ll make it all the way to the final and win.