Broken Bad the second

“We may be broke but we are not broken”. I may be paraphrasing Beppe Fenech Adami a little here but that was the thrust of his address on the granaries last night. Well, that’s too bad Beppe because I’ve chosen the title for this little series about the PN quandaries and it’s there to stay. Obviously I do believe that the party is pretty broken besides being broke and I will not deny that the not so subtle reference to one of the greatest series ever written for TV made the choice of this title much much simpler.

Having got that off my chest let me now turn to the PN Leader’s speech last night. Simon Busuttil switched away from reminding us how Joseph Muscat has lost his map and for one night seems to have focused on his own house that needs setting in order. This is the right time of course in which the PN can engage in a little introspection and the granaries is the right forum for such introspection to be given the seal of approval. Busuttil told the crowd that the PN has always had vision and has had vision for 49 years and he added that the PN still has vision now. But does it?

Some readers will hopefully forgive me for another reference to Guy Ritchie’s movies but all that talk about vision reminded me of a Vinnie Jones speech in Snatch – he had an idea about what exactly it is that has drive and clarity of vision, he was not too impressed about its cleverness though. The thing is I have an aversion to party conference/mass meeting/staged event rhetoric and that aversion is deeply rooted in the fact that most times the basic building block of such rhetoric is good old bull. The point about having vision is not that you talk about it but that you act upon it. You see Simon, to people like me your talk about having vision is not very different from Joseph Muscat’s talk about having a road map.

Six months have passed since the ignominious thrashing at the polls for the PN. During those six months it was supposed to go through the inevitable “sackcloth” moment that involves a diet of humble pie and much (very much) introspection. During those six months we did not expect the PN to renege on its constitutional responsibility to act as an opposition and guardian. The latter work comes as second nature of course but its importance should never be underestimated – the opposition has a very important role to play within our constitutional structure and an important part of that task is keeping the government in check when it comes to seeing whether it is delivering what it promised.

But that’s not what the “vision” bit is about. The vision bit is directly linked to what I spoke about in the first part of this series. The PN is supposed to be asking itself what kind of party it wants to be. In a way it needs to be reinventing itself to a certain extent – particularly if it does not want to fall into the same ruts of the past. It is encouraging (very) to see Simon Busuttil distinguishing between the politics of salesmanship and the real politics of values. What is not really credible is the assertion that the PN has already found its vision. Really?

Unless this vision has been cloned from some outside source there have been little clues to show that the PN is reforming its forma mentis and that it has developed a new basic building block upon which to build a real plan that can be pitched to the voters eventually. Nobody is expecting the PN to come up with an electoral manifesto as of yesterday and to be honest we would even be prepared to wait a little longer than six months given the structural deficiencies (administratively speaking) within which such intellectual revival needs to take place. In the meantime though I would dare suggest that the PN undertakes an exercise of intellectual honesty with its closest members as well as with the more discerning of voters.

“We have worn the sackcloth, we repent, we recognise where we need to go and we are beginning to work to get there” would have been a splendid start. Throw in an appeal for involvement that does not smack of a recruitment campaign for billboards and yes-men (and women) and you might just be on the right track.

Returning the nationalist party to the value-driven movement that is built on the value of the human being and his potential does not have to be a step back. It can be a step forward (as they like to say). It will take a bit of discipline to ignore the instincts and bad habits that have developed over the past.

It will mean that they don’t need to bother much about a few misplaced boos here and there.

Sticks and stones.