Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/911593
maltatoday SUNDAY 3 DECEMBER 2017 Interview 14 By Raphael Vassallo You have been elected secretary general of the Nationalist Party, after submitting your nomination literally five minutes before the nominations closed... and also after MEP David Casa had withdrawn on the presumption that he would actually be running against Pierre Portelli. Was this an elaborate ruse to eliminate Casa (known to be unsympathetic towards PN leader Delia), and thus consolidate the new leadership's control? Not really, no. It is no secret that both Pierre Portelli and my- self were close to Adrian Delia in his leadership campaign. So when there was the handover of the party [to the new leadership], and we started looking at what posi- tions would be filled by whom... we departed from the idea that I would be focusing on the party media – in fact, I had already started taking look at the content, and so on – and that Pierre would be secretary general. Pierre and I go back a very long way: we were at university together, and there is a certain chemistry between us. But we soon realised that while we both had experience in poli- tics and media, the truth was that Pierre had more experience than me in the media - he managed a media house, and therefore un- derstands even the financial as- pects better... while also having worked in newspapers, TV and radio – while I had more expe- rience in politics. We realised it would make more sense the other way round... Perhaps, but the last-minute programme change had an effect on the race itself. David Casa might not have pulled out otherwise... That's a question to ask David Casa. But if you want my interpre- tation: the relations between us [Casa and I] are so good that... let me put it this way, we're friends, and have been close for a long time. It has nothing to do with this election. So I don't think he would have had a problem with me... if anything, the problem would have been to run against me, as a friend... But it seems that you were the one who had a problem running against him. In fact, you ended up uncontested for the post... Nobody stopped other candi- dates from contesting... neither Casa, nor anyone else. But even so, the post of secretary general has traditionally always been un- contested in the PN. The secre- tary general has always been very close to the leader: there has to be a chemistry between the two roles. Why? Because the secretary general is the administrative, or- ganisational, political, financial and commercial arm of the party. Everything has to pass through his hands. So it is useless for the leader to have a lot of aspirations, if his secretary general is pulling him in a different direction. You have to see it also in this context... The difference here is that past PN leaders enjoyed broad support, not just of the secretary general, but also across the entire party. Delia does not enjoy total support at all... in fact, six of his own backbenchers have just voted against his motion in Parliament. There have even been reports of individual MPs coming to blows behind the scenes... That is absolutely not the case. First of all, in any group – of any kind; it could be a family – there is an art of compromise, and an element of conflict. It's a question of conflict and compromise: a clash of ideas, from which some- thing different always emerges. Ideally, something that is also better. Obviously, this also exists in the Nationalist parliamentary group. Not just today, and not because there is Adrian Delia. It has existed for years. One of the biggest challenges facing the PN, which I also mentioned in my first speech in the campaign, is the existential challenge. What is the PN? Who does it repre- sent? What are its values? After what is known in theory as 'the end of history' – to quote Francis Fukuyama – the PN also found it- self facing the challenge posed by the end of ideology. When we, as a party, introduced all the things that we ideologically believed in over the years: facing a number of challenges, culminating in the biggest one of all – EU member- ship, so that our European iden- tity would be sealed - we were left in a situation where the biggest challenge was actually the lack of any big challenges. In a sense, former leaders like Eddie Fenech Adami and Lawrence Gonzi had the 'luxury' of big overriding is- sues. From Simon Busuttil on- wards, that luxury is no more... What if the PN's fortunes had nothing to do with those 'big, ideological battles' at all... but was simply down to issues of leadership? That Eddie's successors have, to date, all lacked his unifying qualities, and therefore cannot stop the party from fragmenting...? You and I are too young to re- member Eddie at the start of his career. When you speak to peo- ple who served under him at the time, they tell you that the first two years as leader were turbu- lent for Eddie Fenech Adami, too. Because the 'Eddie Fenech Adami' you and I remember was at the very apex of his career: we can't even imagine him any other way. So every other leader gets compared to Eddie... but you also have to see how he started out. Eddie had his challenges. For ex- ample, his first secretary general had won the election by only one vote in the executive: if I'm not mistaken, against Josie Muscat. So if you think it was easy for Eddie, it wasn't. The unity came later. The myth of Eddie Fenech Adami came later, too. Another way of looking at it is that the PN is now paying the price for its over-reliance on the 'myth of Eddie Fenech Adami' for so many years: without that myth to hold it together, it is simply falling apart at the seams... No, I wouldn't agree. I think that, When we, as a party, introduced all the things that we ideologically believed in over the years [...] we were left in a situation where the biggest challenge was actually the lack of any big challenges CHALLENGE PHOTOGRAPHY BYJAMES BIANCHI Don't blame it all on