Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/887355
Opinion 25 maltatoday, SUNDAY, 15 OCTOBER 2017 It's the same with Said's approach to leadership 'elections'. He doesn't want to be 'elected' PN deputy- leader; he just wants to be directly appointed instead. And who can blame him? After all, the last time Said faced any real opposition in a two-horse race... he lost. So yes, I can well imagine he would have much preferred to be the sole candidate in that race, too. So much so, that there was even a last-ditch (and obviously unsuccessful) attempt to force out his only contestant in the second round. But last I looked, the whole point of having democratic structures was not to guarantee the result that only one candidate wants... it was to ensure that whoever gets appointed to a leadership post enjoys majority support within the party as a whole. The PN even has an internal motto it likes to use on such occasions. Said himself quoted it extensively in his own leadership campaign: 'No one man is bigger than the party'. Strangely, however, Chris Said doesn't seem to think it applies to himself. When it comes to securing a nice new leadership role (to compensate for the one that democracy failed to deliver)... the opinion of the rest of the party no longer seems to matter at all. In setting that particular condition, Said's only concern was to secure the result he wanted... regardless whether or not it's a reflection of the mood among the party's delegates and card-holding members. I'd say that makes him a very great deal 'bigger than the party'... at least, in his own esteem. But there is clearly a lot more to this abnormal demand than a simple attempt to derail the democratic process. Perhaps I shouldn't even single Said out so conspicuously, either... after all, he is hardly unique in wanting to engineer an undemocratic result, and then pretend it was some kind of victory for democracy. Just to illustrate that point for us, PN leader Adrian Delia countered Said's offer with conditions of his own. This is from a report in the Times of Malta: "The same source said the new PN leader was ready to accommodate this request so long as Dr Said returned the favour by ensuring that none of the MPs who backed him for leader contest the post of deputy leader for party affairs. 'Such a plan would be a good compromise as it would eliminate the possibility of having two deputy leaders from Dr Said's camp trying to clip the leader's wings," sources close to Dr Delia said." That second part may even be true, when viewed from Delia's perspective. But 'such a plan' would also bypass anything resembling involvement of the rest of the PN, in a decision to appoint two of its own leaders. It would reduce the democratic process to a backroom deal which takes no account at all of what the party as a whole might have to say in the matter. So if this 'cunning plan' goes ahead, it will not be just one 'democratic election' to be undemocratically subverted to fit a preordained script... but two. Both deputy leaders (for parliamentary and party affairs) respectively will have been chosen simply on the basis of the present leadership's convenience, and nothing more. Naturally, I won't pretend to be dismayed by the broader underlying implications. We all know that 'democracy' means more in the dictionary than it does anywhere in the real world of mercenary politics... and there are far better examples of this in practice, than the one outlined above. No, the thing that intrigues me is how utterly counter-productive this sort of approach really is. One of the reasons Chris Said gave for laying down that condition is that something similar had been demanded (and granted) before. He gave the example of Mario de Marco, who was uncontested for the deputy leadership after losing the bigger race to Simon Busuttil in 2013. What Said seems to have overlooked is the effect of that decision on the PN's subsequent electoral performances. It's not as though the Busuttil/de Marco/ Fenech Adami leadership trio went on to score a string of unprecedented victories, you know. Quite the opposite, in fact: and, with a little healthy dose of hindsight... it's easy to see why, too. There is a limit to how far you can tweak the fundamentals of democracy... before democracy eventually gets fed up, and bites you in the bottom. Part of the reason the PN ended up in its present, unenviable plight is its consistent habit of ignoring the will of the people who make up the backbone of that party: the paid-up members, the delegates, and ultimately the Nationalist electorate in its totality. Ironically, both Chris Said and Adrian Delia claimed they understood this during the recent leadership election race. In different ways, both promised to challenge a party 'establishment' that had caused the PN so much harm. From that perspective, I should be surprised to see them both negotiating the terms of their own party establishment... and in so doing, repeating the same mistakes they themselves had earlier vowed to amend. Yet it doesn't surprise me in the slightest. I wonder why... 'Such a plan' would bypass anything resembling involvement of the rest of the PN, in a decision to appoint two of its own leaders. It would reduce the democratic process to a backroom deal