The PN and its core mission

It seems Ivan J. Bartolo’s advice to the Nationalist Party has a fighting chance of being taken. Just not in the sequence that Bartolo suggested.

The PN MP’s much publicised appeal was for the beleaguered political party to take stock of its organisation and raison d’être before choosing the next leader. It’s sensible advice which was also given, and ignored, in 2017.

Some leaders do not emerge at once. Their distinctive voice begins to be heard when a political party conducts a radical internal dialogue. Along with the strategic direction there then appears the profile the leader who will best give it voice.

It is, effectively, what happened in the long twilight of Giorgio Borg Olivier’s leadership of the PN in the mid-1970s. First, the party influencers decided that what was needed was a leader who represented a different model of authority from that offered by Dom Mintoff. Then the choice fell upon Eddie Fenech Adami.

Bartolo’s advice has not been heeded and the PN has decided to have the leadership election first. However, a consensus seems to be forming that, whoever is the new leader, what needs to follow is the kind of strategic overhaul that Bartolo has urged.

It’s not without precedent. Oddly, given what I’ve just said about the election of Fenech Adami, we can find a parallel in Fenech Adami’s first years as leader.

His first general secretary, Louis Galea, organised a comprehensive consultation exercise with the party members. Everything was on the table. What kind of Malta did they want? What did they deplore? The collected written answers are said to have filled a whole room.

Peter Serracino Inglott was then asked what he made of the answers. He read every answer. Out of the hope, anger and frustrations, he wove a synthesis. Then, he drafted a set of proposals that offered coherent institutional solutions – in education, health, social policy, economy and so on.

The process did not end there. The draft was discussed at every level of the party, right up to the executive committee where changes were made. By the time the process was over, the PN had what it called, in

English, its “statement of basic policy” – the Fehmiet Bażiċi (1986), whose idiomatic translation would be “basic convictions”.

It’s been 40 years, much has changed and the last thing the PN needs is more nostalgia. But that exercise still has something to say to the present moment, not least about the red herrings to avoid.

One piece of useless advice concerns (depending on who’s speaking) principles, ideology or roots. No one who says that the PN should go back to its “conservative roots” or re-read Fehmiet Bażiċi and revise its principles can possibly have read it.

There’s a reason why the document was not called “basic principles”: there are very few of them stated. Much of the document is made up of detailed policy – itself substantially revised 10 years later in a document called Futur, the elaborate 250-page electoral programme of the 1996 election (immediately forgotten because that election was lost).

The current Labour government’s idea of politics is not just narrow and corrupt; it’s a dead end- Ranier Fsadni

What is stated explicitly is that the PN stands for a peaceful revolution (so much for “conservative roots”) that protects liberty and minorities, respects all centres of social and public power (not just the state) and invites creative participation in economy and society. Other than that, it’s pure strategic direction, sector by sector.

It’s saved from unprincipled pragmatism because the basic convictions serve as a filter. If it furthers emancipation, then it’s in. If it treats persons as isolated individuals, without social bonds and responsibilities, then it’s out.

It refuses to see all property as either private or state-owned; some property, the commons, is neither and deserves protection. It sees democracy as a method, not just a value: continuing consultation incorporates resilience within institutions.

So, on the one hand, in 2025 there is everything to re-write. On the other, the filters are still useful for a world of AI tutors, deep-sea mining, podcasting, online communities and planetary responsibility.

There are new forms of emancipation to support, new economic and cultural creativity to unleash, new infrastructures for dialogue and consultation. They will help the PN find its raison d’être today.

Together, they can help the PN present itself as more than just an alternative to Labour which, in its current incarnation, resembles the debauched Tunisian ruling party of 25 years ago: protective of personal rights, an authoritarian kleptocracy on almost everything else.

The current Labour government’s idea of politics is not just narrow and corrupt; it’s a dead end. Labour has no way of reforming it without imploding. And, yet, it needs reform to address adequately the radical challenges posed by AI and the environmental crisis (to name only two).

The PN should aim to stand for a different kind of politics altogether. It should make a different future seem possible. However, no one will buy it – even with the best policies in the world – if the PN doesn’t act as though it has a future. The biggest immediate challenge it faces is crawling out of its current state of depression.

A political party thrives on social energy. That’s as much part of its raison d’être as a grand strategic mission. Fortunately, each helps the other thrive: energy is generated by a sense of mission and mission is discovered in wide-ranging consultation.

Bartolo and others have shown what needs to be done. The issue is whether the PN still has enough grit to do it.