Thirteen years ago, philosophy professor Joe Friggieri was invited by the Nationalist Party to give the keynote speech during the party’s general conference.

Lawrence Gonzi was PN leader and prime minister.

Then, PN MP Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando presented a parliamentary motion calling for a divorce referendum. The referendum was held.

Gonzi’s PN campaigned against. Joseph Muscat’s Labour was in favour. The ‘Yes’ prevailed. The Nationalist Party was in disarray.

Friggieri insisted that those MPs who voted ‘No’ in the referendum and were now voting ‘Yes’ in parliament were not contradicting their conscience. They were voting ‘Yes’ because their conscience was telling them to respect the people’s decision.

Gonzi was adamant and voted against the peoples’ will. The rest is history.

In 2013, the Nationalist Party was trounced at the polls and has been trounced since.

But at that fateful PN general conference, Friggieri pointed out that the PN, which rightly campaigned for and secured Malta’s EU membership, was totally unprepared for the societal changes that membership brought. A few clapped. Others nodded, silently, in approval. On a few others, Friggieri’s statement was completely lost.

Post 2013, now in opposition, and with Simon Busuttil at the helm of the Nationalist Party, many thought that the former popular MEP would bring a much-needed change to the party.

Muscat’s Labour started to implement some much-needed but quite radical changes, especially with regard to LGBTIQ+ rights.

It was a no-brainer that the PN would not oppose those changes – not with Busuttil, steeped in EU politics and certainly not an arch-conservative as Gonzi was, now calling the shots.

But oppose them he did, or, to be kind to the man who is widely considered to have caused untold political harm to the PN, a handful of his MPs did. The most vociferous of them all were the same ones who, a few years later, would dethrone a democratically elected leader – Adrian Delia. They had the upper hand and forced Busuttil to oppose those reforms.

The country went to the polls and Busuttil’s PN suffered a humiliating defeat.

He was replaced by a political outsider, Delia, a lawyer, who promised a new way of doing politics.

Many, across the political divide, hoped for the best. It was time for the PN to straighten itself out and pull up its socks. But Delia had to have a short shelf life. The deeply rooted establishment within the PN wanted him out and, eventually, they did.

Since then, the former PN leader has adopted the failed logic of ‘if-you-can’t-beat-them-join-them’ and is now rubbing shoulders with the people who politically decapitated him. Unfortunately for him, with friends like them…

Many have since given up, coming to the conclusion that the PN stands for nothing but confusion- Norma Saliba

And then came Bernard Grech. He was placed there by the people who ousted Delia and they have left him little to no place for manoeuvre.

He went to the polls and suffered the PN’s most humiliating defeat in its history at the hands of Labour’s Robert Abela.

Last June, following the MEP and local council elections, Grech naively thought that the narrowing of the gap between Labour and the PN meant that he was making inroads but it is screamingly obvious that Labour’s loss of votes was due to a significant number of traditional Labour Party voters who opted to stay at home.

Truth is that the PN did not gain new votes – it was Labour that lost a chunk of its support.

We have since lost no time in making changes within the party structure, leaving no stone unturned in reaching out to those voters who snubbed the ballot boxes.

Time will tell.

The sad truth, for Grech’s PN, is that, 13 years later, from that party general conference that Grech most probably did not attend, the PN is still wondering what it stands for.

Party insiders say that ‘What does the PN stand for?’ is a question posed at each and every strategy meeting at Pietà, since that fateful day when Gonzi marched to parliament and (following the divorce referendum) voted against the peoples’ will.

No answer has been found to that question that has tormented PN activists ever since.

Many have since given up, coming to the conclusion that the PN stands for nothing but confusion.

Today’s PN, since the Gonzi administration dying days, has zero credibility on economic competence, zero credibility on environmental issues (consider the Villa Rosa controversy – minister Clint Camilleri told parliament that the developer recounted how he met Grech  and the latter told him that he looks forward to inaugurating the project when he’s prime minister) and its stand on key societal changes have remained conservative as ever.

The latest political effort from Grech’s PN is to call for a ‘youthful Malta’ leaving voters wondering how exactly he intends to do that when he is surrounded by the very same people that said ‘No’ to divorce, same-sex marriage and free IVF.

Before the PN can be taken seriously, it must affect a radical change within its troops.

Do not hold your breath. Thirteen years later, the people who called the shots then are still calling them now.

The more things change...

Norma Saliba is Labour Party’s head of communications and spokesperson.