Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/869387
maltatoday, SUNDAY, 3 SEPTEMBER 2017 22 Opinion W e all know the score with this type of 'election weekend ' article. I am writing it before the vote has actually been taken; and you are reading it after the (preliminary) result is already known. This, of course, is true of any article published on the Sunday after any election. It's what makes election-weekend newspapers so spectacularly trite and unhelpful. By definition, they cannot supply any information about the result, or anything else that would be in high priority demand on the day. So we usually have to be content with headlines about the 'latest voter turn-out statistics' – long after the polling booths have closed, and the count is already almost done. Here, however, the landscape is slightly different. Unlike general, local or European elections, the leadership election of any party is decided by an internal vote: in this case, to be taken by 1,500 'party councillors'. We have no polls to give us even a remote indication of what these 1,500 people might actually be thinking... what sort of person they (as opposed to you or I) would consider a 'good leader' in the current climate; or what their priorities may be when it comes to rebuilding or rebranding the party. Making any form of prediction under such circumstances becomes a perfectly pointless exercise. I don't think I have ever seen such a wide open contest in any local political scenario. Consider Thursday's debate, for instance. On paper, it would normally be considered 'political suicide' for a PN leadership contestant to spend most of his allotted time slagging off the PN's administrative structures. Yet this is what both Adrian Delia and (even more so) Frank Portelli chose to do. (Note: I am the first to admit that puns about the latter's name have lost some of their sheen through overuse. But let's be honest: Frank was frank. No doubt about it.) As for Delia, he practically spelt out the current malaise with the PN in no uncertain terms. At every point he emphasised a street-level sensation that some great big monumental 'change' is on the way: a 'change' which is urgently desired by the masses, but blocked at every opportunity by the 'hidden hand ' behind the throne. I will come to what sort of 'change' in a moment... but there can be no denying that Delia is right, if only about the mood among several thousand Nationalist supporters right now. It is clear as daylight that a sizeable chunk of the PN's support-base is sick and tired of the current party 'establishment' – including, but not limited to, its administrative structures – in the same way as the electorate grew sick and tired of Nationalist governments after 25 years. And we can all see with our own two eyes that the same establishment is hell- bent on retaining its grip on the party... to the extent that the administrative council even urged Delia to withdraw from the contest altogether (thus eliminating any real 'choice' from this election). This, too, is something that wouldn't be expected to happen on paper. Same goes for Simon Busuttil 's intervention: it is little short of astounding that an outgoing leader should so blatantly try to inf luence the outcome of an election which is being held to replace... himself. (Though I'll admit it has precedents in the wider world: Tony Blair tried to do the same thing to Jeremy Corbyn... and just look how that turned out). A lot of other things happened that made this an utterly unique leadership election. Like the PN's electoral commission telling us that it had no responsibility in vetting the candidates at application stage. Erm... excuse me, but if the job of organising a leadership election does not fall to the electoral commission... whose job is it? Why, the PN's, of course. 'The party' should have vetted the candidates... as if the PN's 'electoral commission' is not part of that 'party' at all. I hate to say it, but this chimes in perfectly with previous statements by a certain former PN treasurer, who told us that 'the PN's financial situation was not the treasurer's responsibility'. Both cases point towards an increasingly undeniable fact: that the PN's structures exist for purely cosmetic purposes, and that the real decision- making power lies elsewhere. And what is that, if not the exact same malaise that both Delia and Portelli took pains to describe last Thursday? All the same: this tells us plenty about the precise nature of the battle-lines drawn between the contestants... but nothing at all about how those 1,500 councillors might be viewing the situation. Even from my own position, way outside the epicentre, I can see that it is hardly an easy choice. That is why I tried watching that debate exclusively from the point of view of one of those 1,500: asking myself, at every point, how an imaginary PN councillor may or may not interpret what he or she was hearing. Obviously, that depends on what PN councillors actually want out of this contest: which is very different from what you or I might want if we were in their place. One message that emerged loud and clear from all four contestants (both Delia and Said closed their final statements with it) is that the PN wants to 'return to winning ways'. It is tired of losing; it wants a leader that can take them back – back, please note – to the formulas that used to win them elections in the past. If that were the only consideration, the winner would be easy enough to pick. The councillors know from experience that 'the fight against Labour' has only ever been won by combative, resilient leaders. People who show they are not afraid of adversity, who stand on their own two feet, who fight back when cornered, and who have the gift of the gab to boot. They would have seen all those qualities in Adrian Delia... ironically, because he was forced into precisely that position by the same party structures that tried to annihilate him altogether. Naturally, they will see other things as well. They will know that Delia was not, as he claimed, given a 'clean bill of health ' at all by the PN ethics committee. Far from it, his answers to questions about his (or his client's) offshore account were 'unsatisfactory'. And let's not forget the unanimous censure by the administrative council. The Raphael Vassallo The only way is back... It is little short of astounding that an outgoing leader should so blatantly try to influence the outcome of an election being held to replace him Clockwise from top left: Alex Perici Calascione, Adrian Delia, Frank Portelli and Chris Said