Tech Expert Gege Gatt Offers Serious Food For Thought For PN’s Future
Digital entrepreneur Gege Gatt has penned a thought-provoking blog with some ideas for the Nationalist Party’s future.
Gatt said the PN should leave nostalgia aside and focus on how the electorate, its demands, and the way people engage with politics have changed dramatically in recent years.
Here are some highlights from his blog.
1. The PN must step out of social media algorithms and back into the agora of public debate.
“Social media has created the illusion of momentum: where likes masquerade as leadership and virality as vision,” he wrote.
“In reality, most citizens are not mobilised but disengaged: watching the noise without joining the conversation. The PN must rise above the cycle of reactive commentary and offer a proactive, credible blueprint for what comes next.”
2. A major focus on AI
With AI disrupting our way of life from several fronts, Gatt said the PN should be front and centre in terms of defining how this technology should restructure work, education and civic life.
“The challenge ahead is not whether society will be changed by AI: it already is. The question is whether our politics can adapt fast enough to govern its consequences. If we fail to build a society that AI won’t break, we will instead break society around AI.”
3. Focus on political imagination over personalities
Gatt said the leadership race should go beyond a personality contest and serve as a test of political imagination.
“Malta, like many democracies, is living through the depoliticisation of politics, where citizens are no longer inspired by political identity, but by tangible outcomes and clarity. Against this backdrop, the PN must do more than rally its base. It must rethink what its base even is.”
4. Focus on strategic dignity
Gatt urged the PN to rise above the social media noise and adopt a position of “strategic dignity”.
“Grace is not weakness. It is the deliberate refusal to mirror one’s opponent’s cynicism.”
“It assumes good intent where possible, invites dissent without punishment, and offers room for growth. This is tactical clarity. A party that insists on principled conduct, even under pressure, signals strength. It positions itself above the pettiness. It earns credibility in a culture exhausted by performative politics.”
5. Push nostalgia to the side
As many political commentators have suggested, Gatt said that the PN failed to innovate after achieving its longstanding goal of EU accession. He warned that resorting to nostalgia is unlikely to resonate much with the modern electorate.
“The mythologising of the Fenech Adami era may feed the faithful, but it speaks little to the electorate of today, an electorate raised on different values, digital norms, and platforms of participation. The social compact has changed: people don’t relate to parties, they relate to experiences forged from solid ideas.”
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