Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/846769
11 maltatoday, SUNDAY, 9 JULY 2017 News 'We need to question everything' YANNICK PACE THE Nationalist Party must "question everything" as it sets out to rebuild itself following its loss in last month's general elec- tion, according to Nationalist MEP Roberta Metsola. Speaking to MaltaToday in Strasbourg, Metsola insisted that in the run-up to the election, the PN believed it was close to a win and was by no means expecting such a big loss. "In my opinion, it was worse than 2013 because [PN leader] Simon Busuttil led such a great campaign," she said, adding that today the party finds itself in a leadership race which it was not envisaging before the election. According to Metsola, the changes needed in the party to- day go beyond a simple "rapport tat-telfa" – the report commis- sioned by the Nationalist Party to analyse the 2013 loss. "We're not at that stage, we're beyond that, and that means we have to look at everything and question everything," she said. "It doesn't mean destroying what we have, but questioning it and seeing to it that what currently exists is conducive to a victory in five years." "We must also consider wheth- er our electoral machine is adapt- ed to today's type of election campaign," added Metsola. Another issue that must be worked on by the PN is its ability to listen and attract new people to the party, adding that it must also consider how it "feeds pub- lic opinion into its parliamentary debates". "We need to attract better and younger candidates to make sure that there aren't whole gen- erations that are not represented in parliament," she explained, pointing to the fact that the La- bour parliamentary group "spans across more generations" than that of the PN. Of particular importance, said Metsola were section commit- tees, which she said provide a clear idea of what makes the peo- ple the party aims to represent, tick. "I spend a lot of my summer going around village feats and it is essential that I do so because I meet people there that have never entered a political party of- fice," she said. Despite not being a part of any party structure, she said many of these people she meets vote and are very vocal about their thoughts and beliefs. "They spend all their time talk- ing about the 'festa' but they don't bother with who represents them in parliament, and I think Joseph Muscat was better at reaching out to them," she continued. Not just the leadership The need for reform goes be- yond the party's leader, said Met- sola, who also insisted that most people would not point to Busut- til as being the reason for the loss. "He galvanised the party and implemented a number of chang- es," she said. According to the MEP, Busuttil worked hard to reach out to the harshest of critics, however she acknowledged that this clearly wasn't enough. "It's possible that in reaching out to these critics we lost sight of the people who were tradi- tionally closer to us," she added. One common analysis of the PN's loss was that it was too focused on corruption, and lacked a holistic narrative and vision that could compete with Labour's which was a continu- ation of the Taghna lkoll vision which had been so effective in 2013, however Metsola pushed back against claims that the PN spent too much time discussing corruption. "We have to say, that in any other country, even a fraction of what was pinned on the gov- ernment would have caused a number of resignations," she stressed. "The fact that they didn't, does not mean the PN should have given up and de- cided not to speak about corrup- tion." In addition to this, she said that unlike the country's last Labour Opposition, during the last leg- islature, the PN under Busuttil had tried to present alternative proposals and policies, insisting that the party's economic com- petence, could have, and should have been extolled more. On whether the PN should have credited Labour more for the fact that the country was doing well, Metsola pointed out that in 2013, despite the econo- my "doing extremely well", the incumbent Nationalist Party had still lost by a great majority and this meant that the electorate had perceived the PN as having been in government far too long. Furthermore, she said that while the PN might have had "the best message", it wasn't be- ing "transmitted to everybody", and that the PN's "podium poli- tics" might not have been as ef- fective as going into people's houses and hearing their con- cerns. "The idea that Facebook is eve- rywhere might not necessarily be accurate," she said. "On social is- sues, on tackling poverty, and on looking at people who wanted at- tention on a one-to-one level, we should have done more." The liberal-conservative divide On the Nationalist Party's lack of flexibility in dealing with civil liberties issues, many of which have become more widespread in society, Metsola said the party should be proud of the fact that it has "an extremely vibrant and energetic parliamentary group". "Simon [Busuttil] really mar- ried the two extremes, and in fact you will see that in the same sex marriage vote there will be a vote in favour," she said. Metsola added that the party had understood it was the best position for it to take, having at the same time allowed for the necessary discussion to take place and to not allow Prime Minister Joseph Muscat to "take advantage of the situation by di- verting attention away from the real issues at hand and throwing curve balls at the opposition". "We will continue to analyse and learn, and I am part of a movement to make sure that the opposition behaves as a credible one, and that means criticising where we need to criticise while ignoring the fact that Labour will continue to paint us as be- ing negative," she said. She said that ultimately the party would continue to insist on the need of investment that will bring jobs and for more sustainable economic policies, while working both "internally and externally" to convince peo- ple that it has learnt from its mistakes. "At the same time, we must show that we are not ashamed of our past when we ran the coun- try very well and that is some- thing I will insist on because I am not going to accept anything that would require us to be apol- ogetic for things we managed to do very successfully in the past." Nationalist MEP Roberta Metsola says that ahead of the PN's leadership election, the party must start questioning itself in ways it did not do before "It doesn't mean destroying what we have, but questioning it and seeing to it that what currently exists is conducive to a victory in five years."