Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1428470
10 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 14 NOVEMBER 2021 OPINION Raphael Vassallo The issue is no longer 'abortion'. It's 'leadership' I'm beginning to suspect that there's a secret manual some- where – compulsory reading for all Opposition leaders, it seems – entitled: 'How to spec- tacularly shoot yourself in the foot' (or, to give its more Bib- lical name: 'How to tie a mill- stone around your own neck, and hurl yourself headlong into the sea…') Seriously, though. It can't ex- actly be a coincidence that all three Opposition leaders we've had since 2013 – in their own separate ways – all went and did precisely that… through what can only be described (in, I believe, tennis terminology) as 'unforced errors'. In Simon Busuttil's case, it was by ignoring the conclu- sions of a PN-commissioned electoral defeat report, and basing his entire electoral cam- paign on only one, ill-fated is- sue (and I'll leave you to guess which, just for the sake of not digressing further). Adrian Delia's case was ad- mittedly more complex – he was hardly the original archi- tect of his own misfortunes – but he nonetheless made nu- merous tactical errors which only compounded the internal divisions within the PN: with results that ultimately brought about his own downfall. And OK, those 'errors' may indeed be vastly different, in character and substance; but they still have a number of things in common. On both occasions, an Opposition par- ty that was already plagued by internal divisions, somehow managed to emerge even more fragmented than before. And the resulting divisions were en- tirely 'home-grown', too: that is to say, it was the Nationalist Party that manoeuvred itself into a tight corner… without, it must be said, very much prod- ding from Labour. Well, this is the part I don't get about Bernard Grech's lat- est effort to repeat the mistakes of the past. For starters, you'd think that the PN would have actually learnt a thing or two, from the disastrous experience of the past eight years; and be- sides… I was under the impres- sion that the whole point of electing Bernard Grech was to 'reunite' the Nationalist Party: and not to create entirely new, entirely unnecessary excuses for it to just continue tearing itself to pieces… But to compound matters fur- ther: in Bernard Grech's case, it's almost as though he did it on purpose. I can honestly think of no other reason why an Opposition leader – already struggling against such monu- mentally difficult odds – would go off on a tangent like that, and bring up the one, solitary issue that not even Labour dares criticize the PN over an- ymore (for reasons that should, by now, be pretty obvious). Let's go over what happened again, shall we? It started with a radio interview by Dione Borg on the PN's own station, in which Bernard Grech – en- tirely unprompted, it seems – suddenly piped up and said (and this as close as I can get to a word-for-word translation): "The abortion issue is a closed matter. This party was, is, will always be against abortion. It is a clear declaration I have made, that my predecessors have made before me, and it is our official position as laid down in the statute. Nobody, nobody, and I repeat nobody… as long as I am PN leader, I will not permit anybody who is in favour of abortion to remain in this party, or to represent it in any way. Not in the past, not in the present, and not in the fu- ture, either…" Hmm. Already, I suppose, it can be seen that the issue at stake here is not really 'abor- tion' at all. Because, regardless of all our contrasting opinions on that thorny subject… there is at least one small part of that quote we can all safely agree upon. It's a 'clear declaration', all right. A very, VERY clear dec- laration indeed. In fact – short of being nailed to the doors of the Wittenberg Cathedral, in the 15th century – political declarations don't often get very much clearer than that, you know… And this brings me to the first of many problems (none of which, I might add, has any- thing to do with 'female repro- ductive rights'). The statement itself may have been painstak- ingly clear… but the conse- quences, so far, have been an- ything but. It is, of course, an open secret that many Nationalist Party supporters out there – quite possibly, the vast majority – are 'uneasy' with the direction their party seems to be taking, specif- ically on the subject of abortion: for instance, the approval of an openly pro-choice candidate, Emma Portelli Bonnici, to con- test elections; and also, the fact that the PN is now proposing free contraception (including the Morning After Pill) on the National Health Service. This same, very large segment would also have been discon- certed to hear PN MP Stephen Spiteri – shadow Health Minis- ter, no less – calling for a 'pub- lic debate' on the same subject. And it cannot be overlooked that Portelli Bonnici herself (but not, strangely, Stephen Spiteri) had only just been tar- geted by a particularly vile, per- nicious hate-speech campaign. And this brings me back to that imaginary 'manual' I men- tioned early. Clearly, it must contain a chapter that can be summarised roughly as fol- lows: 'When your party is di- vided along two, irreconcilable lines (no matter how uneven- ly)… make sure you do, or say, something that will somehow manage to piss off both sides equally.' (Oh, and also that: 'When a young, inexperienced member of your own party is under attack… throw her un- der the bus'…)