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6 maltatoday | WEDNESDAY • 5 JUNE 2019 ANALYSIS PN leader Adrian Delia may well stay on as a lame duck till the next election with nobody seemingly willing to mount a leadership challenge. But Delia may have been not far off the mark when he consoled himself with the PN being "Malta's sec- ond largest party," a realisation which explains why nobody is too keen to take his place. The PN does not risk extinc- tion. The risk the PN faces is that of permanently becoming a second party and losing its ability to command sustained electoral majorities from the political centre. And there is no quick fix to this problem. For the decline of the Nationalist Party goes back to 2004, when under Lawrence Gonzi as its new leader the PN struggled with a loss of raison d'être, and the loss of that sense of purpose which kept a dispa- rate coalition of voters united by the goal of joining the Euro- pean Union. What kept the party afloat was the notion that the PN had become a natural party of gov- ernment, in contrast to Alfred Sant's ramshackle opposition. That enabled Gonzi to win by the slimmest of majorities in 2008. But after 2018 Muscat managed to reinvent the La- bour Party as a socially liberal version of Eddie Fenech Ada- mi's third way politics. Now condemned to the oppo- sition again, under a new leader the PN was still under the illu- sion that its loss of power was a historical quirk. Anger over the Panama Papers provided the il- lusion of a quick return to pow- er, which triggered an attempt to raise the stakes higher by rid- ing on the unproven Egrant al- legations. In so doing the party ignored the change in the polit- ical landscape in which Labour had become the new centre, luring the business class to the new neoliberal tune while still giving visibility and rights to social groups, which had been marginalised for decades. In this way Muscat has left two gaps wide open for the PN to occupy at its own peril: a gap on his left which the PN can only fill by becoming some- thing which it never was; and a gap on his right which would entrench the PN's minority sta- tus for posterity. 1. Becoming a national con- servative party Under Delia the party did try to stand for "something" by trying to substitute good governance as its rallying cry, with mumblings on immigra- tion and on the risks of further liberalisation of values under Muscat. Playing the abortion card can be seen as an attempt to cajole these voters. But among voters at large this attempt smacked of despera- tion, especially in view of the fact that the EU parliament has no jurisdiction on the matter. Yet even Delia has not been too keen on reversing rights acquired under Muscat. His only red line so far has been is- sues related to 'life' which were bizarrely extended to IVF and the Istanbul Convention on do- mestic violence. People close to Delia insist that the party can only abandon its conservative cohort at its own risk. Con- servative voters have always been a reality in the PN, co- existing with more liberal cur- rents. The internal balance was kept by left-leaning Catholic ideologues like Peter Serracino Inglott, who had Eddie Fenech Adami's ears. Conservatives had also ac- cepted the party's EU vocation on the mistaken premise that this reinforced Malta's mem- bership in a white Christian club. But they were completely unprepared for the change un- leashed by the watershed di- vorce referendum and later by Muscat's liberalising reforms. They felt let down by Busut- til's acceptance of gay marriage without any real debate in the party and thus may see in Delia as an opportunity to come out of the woodworks. In fact rants against sex education classes by the likes of Edwin Vassallo end up reinforcing the mental block amongst liberals towards the party. Going further down this road will give the PN a sense of pur- pose and possibly entrench its position as the second largest party, but it is a path leading to a dead end when it comes to winning electoral majori- ties. One cannot exclude that a more refined and compassion- ate conservatism and nativism may become more attractive if the economy does experience a downturn in the next decade. 2. Going back to Simon's ways The other alternative to Delia is that of going back to predeces- sor Simon Busuttil's way of do- ing politics, which basically boils down to challenging the moral legitimacy of Muscat's govern- ment. Sure enough Labour's track record on governance, exemplified by Muscat's deci- sion to keep Konrad Mizzi in his cabinet, remains one of its worst blemishes. Any opposition wor- thy of its name would take the government to the cleaners after a scandal of this magnitude. Yet this did not stop Labour from winning big in elections. One may even conclude that if the strategy did not work in the aftermath of the Panama scan- dal, it is even less likely that the strategy would work now. And for the electorate, the anti-cor- ruption crusade smacked of a short-cut to power for a party which had been in opposi- tion for only four years, during which there were few signs of real contrition. Once again, this strategy may work to keep the PN alive and kicking without any real prospect of becoming a majority party. It may also cover up deeper divides in the party on social and economic issues but this won't be enough How can the PN reinvent itself? JAMES DEBONO proposes five ways in which the embattled PN can reinvent itself and avoid the fate of permanently becoming Malta's 'second largest party' For the electorate, the anti-corruption crusade smacked of a short-cut to power for a party which had been in opposition for only four years, during which there were few signs of real contrition

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