Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1041944
18 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 21 OCTOBER 2018 INTERVIEW The PN is gearing up for next year's elections, at a time when – from the outside – it looks irreparably divided. In fact there seem to be two PNs, not one: the faction led by Adrian Delia, and an uprising spearheaded by Simon Busuttil, David Casa, Jason Azzopardi and others. You are contesting this election as a PN candidate. So… whose side are you on? First of all, I don't believe there are 'two PNs', as you put it. There are issues, there are battles that we have fought in the past; battles that we will be fighting in the future; and there are candidates who represent these different battles. The skill of the candidate has to be to represent the Maltese elector- ate in its entirety. You cannot disregard these realities. So from the outside, when you see the picture you're describing, you rely on little elements, little externalisations of how people express disagreements: in a Fa- cebook post, in an interview, in a remark here and there. The re- ality is that the Nationalist Party is united behind a common re- solve. I wouldn't distinguish be- tween one camp and another… Yet at the last Daphne Caruana Galizia vigil in September, the name of Adrian Delia was greeted by jeers and boos by a largely Nationalist audience. How, then, can you deny the existence of a split within the party? The Nationalist Party elector- ate has been always been dis- cerning; it has always screened and scrutinised what its leaders and its candidates do and say. This is a process: we are con- quering trust. We cannot as- sume that people will trust us just because we are the Nation- alist Party… or by default, be- cause 'we need an Opposition'. We have to convince them to trust us. But trust is building in the Nationalist party, I can feel it… Are you suggesting that the Nationalist Party is, in fact, united behind Adrian Delia? I think it is. It's a process. After all, Delia has been party leader only for a year… But a year is a very, very long time in politics. And Delia hasn't closed the gap at all in one year… Don't forget that we have also been through two historically massive, gruelling electoral de- feats. What do you think? That the followers of the PN will rally behind a new leader, just like that? The people are putting us to the test. The question is: are we passing the test? Are we ready to respond to the call of society? I've been in the PN for one month, essentially… as an insider, so to speak. The percep- tion on the inside is that there are no two camps. There is a common resolve… What is this 'common resolve'? To be a credible, pro-positive and committed Opposition party: ready to propose alterna- tive solutions to society's issues today. The reality is that we are an oversized population, living in an undersized infrastructure. We have designed this country according to 1990s figures, when our population was 70,000 less than it is now. My task within the Nationalist Party – and I am committed to it 24 hours a day – is to try and make the party once again a proponent of solutions for this country. First of all, we have been an EU member state for the past 14 years. The EU has brought untold benefits and op- portunities for many sectors. It gave an upgrade to this country on many levels: from our herit- age, to our schools, to health- care, etc. But there are sectors that have been neglected. Farm- ing is one such area… I intend to ask you about agriculture later. But on the subject of the EU: hasn't membership also had other effects? What if I put it to you that the EU's involvement in local politics has actually exacerbated the local partisan divide, and encouraged more tribalism than before? That is partly true. But the re- ality is that the EU cannot save us from ourselves. If we have problems which we need to solve, the EU will not solve them for us. If we see politics as an ex- ercise in tribal warfare, the EU will not change that. In some re- gards, the EU may have actually exacerbated this issue. But it is up to us to do something about it. I will be proposing a differ- ent kind of politics, however: a politics whereby, if the Labour government does something praiseworthy, something which is in a direction we need to go… I will be one of the first to men- tion it. Why not? Just last week, I congratulated Health Minister Fearne on Facebook for the ini- tiative of promoting robotics in Mater Dei. This is the way to go. I'll do the same for others. Wherever there are areas where we need to support or encourage government, my narrative will not be: 'Oh look, government is a crook'. On EFSI [European Fund for Strategic Investment], for example, we saw that Malta is at the bottom of the graph – per capita, not in absolute num- bers – in the use of the Juncker Plan. As I said, this is an under- size infrastructure, for an over- sized population: we badly need long-term, large-scale invest- ment… in transport, education, healthcare, and all our public services. This is what we need to discuss. We need a vision of politics which solves the prob- lems of this country, and takes a long-term view: planning ahead for 10, 20 years down the line… But that's the one thing we don't seem to be getting from the PN right now. And it also explains why, as you said, that party suffered so heavily in the last two elections. People did not see this vision back then. Are you suggesting that they are seeing it more now? Yes. Like I said, trust is build- ing. With this battle-cry, 'Socje- ta Li Jimpurtah' [A Society that Cares], we are bringing out real- ities which the people hold dear to their heart. Like the job mar- ket, for instance. There is now a huge risk of precarious work: not only in the private sector, but even in the public sector. Last week's strike at Gozo Channel, for instance. Why did it happen? Because government gave out a huge number of precarious, short-term contracts, offering the illusion of 'joining the public service'… when in reality, those people were put on the payroll of a private contractor, working side by side with people who do have a public service contract. This is not 'equal pay for equal work'… and there is no dignity at work, either; because your colleagues will enjoy better con- ditions of work, and more secu- rity of tenure. As for the private sector: last week I had a meeting with UHM. They told me that their collective bargaining pow- er is fizzling out... Why? Because you get people coming from abroad… OK, they are en- titled to compete with us for the same jobs. If they are EU nation- als there is no doubt about it. If they are third country nationals, they may be needed in the short term. But if we are talking about single people, with no family, coming here for two or three years, and ready to work for 5 euros an hour… that is going to have an immediate impact on the collective bargaining power of the Maltese worker. There's no denying this. And this is what we mean by a 'A Society that Cares': we are interested in the life of people… not in economic figures that register a 3%, 4%, 5% growth, which is effectively the result of an expanding job market. The job market is, in fact, expanding, in terms of ab- solute numbers. But the salaries, the working conditions, are not expanding. They are actually di- minishing… Never mind misleading impressions of an internecine civil war within the Nationalist Party. MEP candidate PETER AGIUS is confident that the Opposition will emerge more united than ever before, by becoming a 'mouthpiece for the common person's concerns' Raphael Vassallo rvassallo@mediatoday.com.mt United by a common