When the Nationalist Party’s new statute was approved, in June 2020, it was reported that it affirms that the PN is a party of the people with a vocation that serves the interest of the common good and works for the sake of human dignity.
What has come out in the open, lately, by prominent members of the party like Jason Azzopardi, a former MP, and Albert Buttigieg, mayor of St Julian’s, shows that something is defective in the party structure. For Buttigieg to state that he has been betrayed and to ask “Is this the price I had to pay for standing up to be counted?” one has to conclude that there are cracks in the system.
For Bernard Grech to claim that individuals who go public to “attack” the party are not doing it with good intentions is to ignore reality. No, it is not enough to state that internal structures exist to solve such matters. Structures that obstruct freedom of opinion and that aim to keep the status quo should be pulled down.
Why should people like Azzopardi and Buttigieg seem to be rebels when, in fact, they are exposing the cracks within the system?
Václav Havel, in his book The Power of the Powerless, labels such a flawed system as one “of ritual signs that replace reality with pseudo reality”. When a political party, which is supposed to be a means, becomes an end, then members are expected to “surrender their human identity in favour of the identity of the system”.
Grech’s priority should be to see that internal structures are functioning as they should.
Structures exist to serve people and not to retain the status quo.
Individuals feel the need to go public because they are convinced that ‘internal’ structures don’t function well. The main reason why Marlene Farrugia, former Labour MP, resigned from the party was because she had realised that her voice within the party would not only be ignored but hampered and manipulated.
Standing up to be counted requires courage and sacrifice- Ray Azzopardi
Such persons, whom people tend to label rebels or dissidents, are, in fact, beacons of light for they are the ones who expose the ‘lie’ they are living in and stand up for the truth. Havel asserts: “There are no terms whatsoever on which (living in lie) can coexist with living within the truth and, therefore, everyone who steps out of line denies it in principle and threatens it in its entirety.”
When Buttigieg insists that he always stood up to be counted, he was implying that he always exposed the ‘lie’ to live in truth. Contrast his way of doing politics with Evarist Bartolo’s. In Bartolo’s interview in The Sunday Times of Malta, when asked why, though he disagreed with what was happening vis-à-vis Konrad Mizzi and Keith Schembri, he still voted in favour of Joseph Muscat in a vote of confidence, his answer was: “I did that to be able to keep my place in the party and continue to work for change.” He went on to state: “Had I voted against the government, I would have only made some noise with a symbolic but futile gesture”.
No, Evarist, it wouldn’t have been a ‘symbolic and futile gesture’ had you voted against the government. It would have been an act in favour of the truth. Toeing the party line in all circumstances curtails one’s freedom and degrades one’s human dignity. Standing up to be counted requires courage and sacrifice.
Havel maintains that dissidents exist “to defend human beings and the genuine aims of life against the aims of the system”. Renewing and updating systems and structures should be an ongoing process. Behind structures and systems are people and, very often, they are these individuals who, due to their status and responsibility within the structure, slow down progress and prevent change coming about.
I conclude by quoting what Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt ask leaders in their book How Democracies Die: “Can leaders muster the foresight and political courage to reorient what has become an increasingly dysfunctional political party (system) before further damage is done or will we need a catastrophe to inspire the change?”
Ray Azzopardi is a former headmaster