Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/866589
23 maltatoday, SUNDAY, 27 AUGUST 2017 Opinion Was that a debate or a funeral? on his own merits... it can't be, because (at the time of writing) he hasn't actually demonstrated any yet, beyond all the usual platitudes. It would only be because his opponents were all methodically and systematically annihilated in mid-race. Under the present circumstances, he looks set to cross the finishing line first... not because he ran any faster than his competitors, but simply because his competitors were all tripped up soon after the starting pistol: leaving him literally the last man running. If that sort of thing happened in an Olympic race, the event would have to be called off and investigated. The winner might even be stripped of his medal. It would, in a word, be considered 'cheating'. But to be fair, the rules of the political game are indeed slightly different. People with serious liabilities should have known better than to enter the race to begin with. They cannot realistically cry foul when their dirty linen is exposed by others: it's what generally happens when you have dirty linen to expose. Besides, the exact same tactics were used against Labour very recently... and I don't recall any of the four candidates complaining too loudly at the time. By the same token, Chris Said cannot personally be blamed for having fewer skeletons in his closet than, say, Adrian Delia or Frank Portelli. But it's not exactly the ideal way to win a leadership race, now, is it? Personally, I would expect the winner of any leadership race to be the one who evokes the most plausible, doable and appealing vision for the future of the party and country. Yet we heard nothing of the kind in those two hours. Again, there is a good reason for this: both Delia and Portelli wasted most of their allotted time fending off the above-mentioned accusations, leaving them little opportunity to actually expound any ideas of their own. But I didn't hear any original ideas from any of the four at all. Chris Said, for instance, made much of his promise to restore 'maternity' and 'paternity' to a law which he himself approved in Parliament a few months ago. Leaving aside the total misrepresentation of that law and its wording... what, is that the best he could come up with? A minor disagreement concerning legal terminology? That's supposed to excite and invigorate the PN grassroots? To (in his own words) 'bring young people back to the party'? Apart from being a text-book case of skewed priorities, Said's attitude towards that particular issue is also regressive. I use the word in its literal sense: he wants to go back in time, and reverse a decision that many people feel was progressive. Whether you agree with him or not, the fact remains that he is basically looking backwards, not forwards. And the rest of his ideological mantra – Christian values, the value of life, solidarity, etc. – is equally anchored to the past. These may indeed have been hugely innovative and exciting ideas, when they were first proposed as ideological motifs for the PN... but that was by Eddie Fenech Adami in 1977: a full 40 years ago. There is nothing even remotely 'innovative' about repeating that line today. Not, at least, if you have absolutely no intention of building anything of your own, on top of the structure you inherited from your predecessors. Meanwhile, Alex Perici Calascione went a whole step further: he even told us that "there is nothing to change from the PN's seminal 'Fehmiet Bazici' document". What is that, if not another way of saying that, under his leadership, the PN will remain tethered to the same basic vision and identity that has underpinned it for decades? And OK, some of those 'Fehmiet Bazici' might even still be valid today. After all, one doesn't expect a political party to magically transform into something completely different from one day to the next. But 'sticking to what's already there' is, by definition, nothing 'new'. Like that awful cliché about 'being in politics to serve', the entire approach is nothing but a hackneyed repackaging of the same old political message that has been emanating from the PN since I was around six years old... and I'm 46 today. It is dull, boring and hopelessly meaningless to my ears: just imagine how antediluvian it must sound to people born two decades later. The PN doesn't need a new leader to ensure that everything remains the same. Quite the contrary: it needs a new leader to ensure that the party gets the reinvention it so desperately and urgently needs. So if this tired, repetitive and unimaginative mantra is the best any of the aspiring contestants can actually come up with... well, maybe it was indeed a funeral I watched last Thursday. If this tired, repetitive and unimaginative mantra is the best any of the aspiring contestants can actually come up with... well, maybe it was indeed a funeral I watched last Thursday PHOTO BY JAMES BIANCHI