Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/835410
16 maltatoday, SUNDAY, 11 JUNE 2017 News IT hurts, doesn't it? Oh yes. It especially hurts when you're still convinced you're right but are now branded arrogant and self- serving to continue to think so. That you've learnt nothing from the lessons the democratic pro- cess has attempted to teach you. Clearly the outcome of an elec- tion determines the choice of government and parliamentarians and therefore it is the last word on which side has been more con- vincing. But is it the last word on who was more right? In such a black and white conflagration as this last one, does the outcome of an election decide who was right and who was wrong? I have been through three de- feats of the PN – in 1996, 2013 and this year – and in every one of these times the narrative has been identical. First of all it must be explained that the PN activist is a very strange animal. Observe the PN activist's be- haviour in the good days when elections are won. On Friday we campaign, on Saturday we vote, on Sunday we count, on Monday we celebrate, on Tuesday we start complaining. The typical section committee member and Kunsill Generali member of the PN is a tough critic indeed who holds leadership to a very high standard and who will clamour for rolled heads without inhibition. A PN activist is loyal but there are degrees of loyalty and people are never ranked above party. I was at the counting hall in 2013 when within minutes of sorting, the loud roar of Labour activists and the perspex-bashing announced our massive defeat. What a feeling that is. Your rib cage rattles and your eyes burn with suppressed emotional confu- sion. Within an hour though, in the behind-the-scenes rooms of the counting hall, the blame game starts. It takes no time before the PN activist speaks of removing the leadership and starting from scratch again. It is a reflection of the strong democratic credentials of the party and its grassroots that the conversation does not dwell on why the public made a mistake of voting the other side. The quick assumption is not that the people are wrong. Nor that the party was wrong. It is the people running the party that are wrong. Very quickly talk becomes radi- cal. Change is needed and it can- not be superficial change. It must be radical change that makes the party unrecognisable. Anyone who was anyone yesterday must become no one as quick as can be. That very quickly becomes the general narrative of those who supported the PN, including the press that but a few days earlier had adopted the editorial line that the PN was the urgently impera- tive choice for the country. Now the leaders must suffer the punishment for losing the election and in this business there is only one punishment: a lifetime of ban- ishment in the wilderness. Is it not supremely ironic that in a country where politicians get caught money laundering and taking kickbacks, it is their crit- ics who are made to resign? Well, that is how history works: it folds into its yarn amusing twists, for the future to have a point to read our story when we're long dead. In 1996 the punishment was suspended because before anyone could blink twice, Labour's gov- ernment started tumbling over its own feet. And how providential that reprieve proved to be. Eddie Fenech Adami now enjoys (rightly so) near-divine status in the PN pantheon. But in November 1996 his reputation with the faithful was nothing like that at all. 'OK, Eddie put on a great show but now that he lost it's time for him to go. And with him anyone who worked for him.' If that sentence had been executed – if it had not been for Lino Spiteri publicly piss- ing on Alfred Sant's shoes – there would likely have not been a suc- cessful 1998 campaign, a success- ful EU referendum, and the rest of that glorious chapter of Maltese and PN history. In 2013 the sentence was execut- ed and how. The reinvention of the PN re- quired the exorcism of its past. With the exception of elected MPs who had to be carried like scars and could not be got rid of, any other recognisable face from the Gonzi years was sent packing. In my own small way – being the guy who, in that narrative, messed up the buses – I too was sent packing. If I'm honest after 15 years of full-time professional politick- ing I did not need much shoving to walk away. I was not resentful when in 2013 the new leadership took over and politely though un- mistakably, showed me the door. I was crawling towards it anyway. Others were rather more uncer- emoniously kicked out and asked not to show up. I insist I felt no bitterness and no resentment. I too am a PN activist you see. My loyalty too is foremost to the party rather than to the people active within it, even when those people are me. The party needed me (and many other more important and more valid con- tributors) to be excluded, to give space to the new guys and girls to rebuild the financially bankrupt party they had inherited, to trans- form it into a party that could win again. And they did a great job of it too. It is tempting when the knives are out to burn hindsight and meas- ure the success of Simon Busut- til and his team by the electoral result in the last election. But it is wrong to do so. They propped up the party, they made it into a respected and respectable force in our community again, and they ran a campaign that was pertinent and eminently readable. Losing the war on the other fronts The election result does not mean the PN was wrong. It means the last word was said on its ability to convince people it was a better alternative to Labour. The PN won the battle it fought in the switchers and floaters bat- tleground. I only have anecdotal evidence… it's the same that put the independent press, the cor- porate body representatives, the professional societies and the civil society community in one mind with the PN. People with no political affiliation as such were persuaded Labour needed to be removed from power, and the reasons for voting Labour in 2013 were, if anything, even more ap- plicable to switch to the PN this time round. The PN fought its war on that front, choosing the battle it could win, and, I argue, it won it. It won it when the independent press en- dorsed it. It won it when Marco Cremona, Astrid Vella, Philip Rizzo, Grace Borg and many other firm critics of the PN in 2013 en- dorsed it in 2017. The PN won that battle but lost the war. And the war was being fought by Labour on fronts the PN had not even realised existed. And I submit the failure to re- alise that these fronts existed is partly due to the pogrom of 2013 that eliminated the institutional memory and the personal net- works accumulated by the party over decades. I shall attempt to highlight those fronts. Firstly the economic argument. The party of bulk buying, regres- sive protectionism, price-fixing, wage-freezing, isolated markets, VAT-removing and disastrous re- placing – and the politicians who Manuel Delia has seen 15 years of political action up close. Now, the man 'who messed up the buses' says it is time for the PN to rebuild the alliances it lost after the party chose to fight its battle in the media and boardrooms but not in the streets The war was fought by Labour on fronts the PN had not even realised existed. This failure is partly due to the pogrom of 2013 that eliminated the institutional memory and personal networks accumulated by the party over decades On changing the PN, tread carefully MANUEL DELIA The election result does not mean the PN was wrong. It means the last word was said on its ability to convince people it was a better alternative to Labour