Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1294561
10 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 4 OCTOBER 2020 Raphael Vassallo OPINION 'Winning by default' is no longer an option MAYBE I'm getting more naïve the older I get… but this week I actually made an effort to watch the final televised debate be- tween Adrian Delia and Bernard Grech: hoping against hope that at least one of them would finally come up with some kind of 'poli- cy vision' of his own (which, let's face it, is the only point of even having such things as 'leader- ship campaign debates' to begin with). Boy, what a waste of time. With hindsight, I may as well have watched a Roadrunner cartoon instead: in the equally futile hope that Wile E. Coyote would actually catch that drat- ted bird in the end, and put a stop to its blasted 'beep-beep- ing' once and for all…. But no matter: even if the debate proved entirely useless when it came to fulfilling the only true purpose of its ex- istence… it did, at least, shed some light on exactly why and how the Nationalist Party got itself into its present, sorry state. Before proceeding, however: for the purposes of this arti- cle, I will limit myself only to the contributions of one of those two candidates – Ber- nard Grech – to the exclusion of Adrian Delia. This is partly because, at the time of writing, Bernard Grech is the one who seems to be cruising towards a comfortable (though hardly deserved) vic- tory; but partly also because… … well, let's just say that there's a reason why Grech re- mains such an overwhelming favourite, despite not having given the tesserati (or, for that matter, the wider Nationalist electorate) even a single valid reason to actually vote for him. Fact of the matter is that Adrian Delia has already been at the helm of the PN for more than three years now; and in all that time, not only has he failed utterly to deliver on his own promise to turn the PN's for- tunes around… but he some- how succeeded in reducing its chances of winning the next election (or indeed, even nar- rowing the gap) to virtually nil. Now: we could argue endless- ly over how much of this was really his own fault, and how much the fault of all the so- called 'PN rebels', and all their incessant attempts to trip him up at every conceivable op- portunity. But quite frankly, that would be another waste of time. Like it or not, the reality is that most Nationalists now turn to Bernard Grech – and not Adrian Delia – for answers to all the fundamental, existen- tial questions that have been dogging the PN for well over 15 years now. Questions like: what is the Nationalist Party, anyway? What does it stand for? Why should we vote for it? And – most crucially of all – what can be done to extricate it from the bottomless pit it now finds it- self in? Yet incredibly, this is how the PN's 'Great White Hope' ac- tually replied, when the same general concerns were put to him directly last Wednesday: "The PN has always been the party that people turned to, in times of difficulty, to put the country back on its feet. The reality is that the PN was founded to safeguard the in- terests of all the people of our nation; and also to ensure that everyone can live a dignified life. To achieve this, we need to maintain contact with peo- ple every day. […] We have to come up with ideas and pro- posals so that you can live a dignified life…" Let me repeat that last part, just for dramatic effect: 'We have to come up with ideas and proposals'… Erm… what can I possibly say to that? Yes, Dr Grech: and about bloody time you realised it, too. That is, in fact, what is inevitably expected of any as- piring political leader, in any part of the democratic world (but even more so, in a leader- ship election that was precip- itated precisely by the lack of 'ideas and proposals' coming from the incumbent leader). So… um… where are all Ber- nard Grech's 'ideas and pro- posals', then? Did he actually provide any at all: not just dur- ing that one particular debate (even if it was the last oppor- tunity to do so before the elec- tion)… but any point since he first expressed an interest in contesting for the PN lead- ership, well over two months ago? Speaking only for myself: I'll be damned if I've heard even a single idea or proposal – still less a fully-fledged policy vi- sion, of the kind we once ex- pected from the PN – coming from Bernard Grech's direc- tion in any of that time. And it certainly cannot be for lack of any national issue or problem to actually base a political plat- form on, either. In fact, given everything that has happened in this country since 2017 – and in particular, over the last 12 or so months – I reckon even a five-year- old child would be perfectly capable of sitting at a desk for five minutes, and outlining the basics of a workable polit- ical platform that could really challenge Robert Abela's lack- lustre government by 2022 (be- cause let's face it: it isn't – or shouldn't be – that hard). Yet the man whose job it is to do precisely that, evidently can't be bothered to even try. And even more bizarrely, he not only expects to win this leadership race without actual- ly doing any running… but he also seems confident that his victory will serve to 'reunite' the PN, and – I kid you not – even restore it to all its former, election-winning glory… Which brings me back to the first (and altogether more in- teresting) part of his extraordi- nary non-answer last Sunday: "The PN has always been the party that people turned to, in times of difficulty, to put the country back on its feet…" Once again, Bernard Grech is perfectly spot-on with that observation. I can even attest to it myself: having voted PN in every election between 1992 and 2004, despite misgivings of my own (to put it mildly) about certain aspects of its policy di- rection under Eddie Fenech Adami. But here, too, there is a reason to account for all those past electoral successes. Actually, there are two (and to be fair, Bernard Grech has at least un- derstood one of them.) The first – as Grech correct- ly surmises – is that a great many people found themselves 'pushed' towards the National- ist Party over the years… not necessarily because they agreed or identified with its policies or ideology… but simply because they felt that the alternative was far worse at the time. At the risk of hugely over- simplifying matters: back in the 1970s and 1980s, the main driving force was a concern with the erosion of democ- racy under Dom Mintoff and Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici; and throughout the 1990s, it was the dangled carrot of EU mem- bership (and, more specifical- ly, Alfred Sant's opposition to the same… not to mention his disastrous stint as Prime Min- ister between 1996 and 1998, which led to his unelectability 10 years later). Before we even get to the sec- ond reason, then, a small prob- lem already swims into view. What I have just described above (however sketchily) was the state of play until we actu- ally achieved the objective of joining the EU in 2004. 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