11 Lessons The Nationalist Party Needs To Learn From Yesterday’s Pathetic Display In Parliament
What happened in Parliament yesterday was a textbook example of what not do to do when in Opposition. In three painful hours, the Nationalist Party showed it had no political strategy, zero ideological vision for the country and not a shred of unity among its own MPs.
PN leader Adrian Delia led an embarrassing fight against an innocuous proposal by the government to grant 100 hours of leave to couples who go abroad for assisted reproduction. This proposal provides some relief to couples – like lesbians or those who suffer from total infertility – who cannot access IVF treatment in Malta because it does not yet allow things like sperm donation, gamete donation and surrogacy.
Here are 11 lessons Delia and his party should learn from the total bashing they got in Parliament, before things get even worse.
1. When you choose your battles, opt for vote-catchers not vote-destroyers.
Even at face value it should have been obvious to Delia and his advisers that challenging a proposal which makes life easier for IVF patients was a terrible idea. Even if Delia desperately wanted to pander to the most conservative segment of the population, he should have waited until the government proposed something remotely edgy, not the granting of leave to couples who just want to procreate by exercising their rights to access treatment abroad. This was a guaranteed vote-loser from the outset and Delia’s inability to see this while his party keeps haemorrhaging votes beggars belief.
2. Don’t pander to the hardcore who will vote for you anyway.
Party insiders say this motion was designed in response to angry grassroots who Delia met on the campaign trail. These ultra-conservative Nationalists seriously think PN lost the election because it was too liberal. Lol. What Delia needs to understand is that these fundamentalists were angry because they were sidelined, ignored and, after all that, delivered a massive electoral loss. Delia needs to win over these people and convince them to get behind a winning strategy. But he should not pander to them at the expense of other voters when they’re the most likely to vote PN anyway.
3. When you file a parliamentary motion you’re definitely going to lose, at least make it one that will embarrass government backbenchers.
From the Panama Papers to civil unions, Labour weathered every single controversial issue in the last legislature as a united parliamentary group. Well, all against one. Prime Minister Joseph Muscat’s plans to introduce embryo freezing were put on hold after at least 10 Labour MPs expressed reservations, and indeed the logic behind the PN’s motion could have been to exploit those rare cracks within the governing party’s mega-majority. Yet the motion’s targeting of lesbian couples played perfectly into Labour’s hands – allowing it to frame the debate as the PN’s latest blunder on LGBT rights instead of one on new reproductive technologies. Rather than splitting Labour, the debate only strengthened it. With regard to political strategy, PN desperately needs to get back to the drawing board and save its parliamentary motions for issues that expose government backbenchers who may be uncomfortable with their party’s policies. When Labour was in opposition they filed motion after motion about the poor bus service and the archaic court systems to force critical PN backbenchers to take a stand on their pet peeves. Delia should go back to the parliamentary archives to see how it’s done.
4. You especially never start a battle that’s only going to expose your own internal rifts.
This was probably Delia’s biggest mistake. He may have thought he was exposing a pressure point inside Labour’s parliamentary group but in fact he only exposed his own. He knew from the start that there were members of his own party who totally disagreed with his stand. And instead of finding something his team could agree upon, he forced them to take a public vote and showed the whole country that a third of the Opposition disagreed with him. On this point alone, Delia should probably ride off into the sunset. Politically, he clearly has no idea what he’s doing.
5. Don’t divert attention from important matters if you’re just going to lose votes.
You can’t forget the context behind all this. The country has just spent the past few weeks grappling with the brutal assassination of a journalist. Thousands of people took to the streets, the European Parliament voted to investigate Malta’s rule of law and our institutions are under the global media spotlight. Instead of capitalising on this moment, Delia diverts attention towards the thing people hate most about the PN: its inability to separate religious beliefs from state responsibilities. Unless you were literally working for Labour, you would have avoided this altogether.
6. Don’t speak legalese when you need people to understand you.
Another eternal problem with the Nationalist Party is the fact that it is crawling with pedantic lawyers who seem to thrive in bullshit legal speak instead of the normal language we use at home. Delia’s attempt at presenting his motion as ‘legal not moral’ was impossible for his fellow Nationalist lawyer-MPs to understand, let alone the people watching from home. Masking your bigotry in legal jargon doesn’t win you any favours. If anything, it confuses the few people who you may have won over with your ridiculous position.
And this seems to be a recurring problem with Delia. He seems to have never taken his legal hat off and worn that of party leader. He only understands verbose discourse and confrontational debates but seems to lack any long-term political strategy.
7. Don’t play to your competition’s greatest strengths.
If you’re still left in any doubt that this was a diabolically bad thing for the PN to do, just watch this nine-minute speech by Prime Minister Joseph Muscat. This was the football equivalent of scoring a hat trick of own goals. Just watch how this debate brings out the most genuine, sensitive and charismatic side of Muscat, for whom IVF is a personal issue as much as a political one.
8. Don’t play up the most outdated members of your team.
The only people Delia could convince to speak in favour of this motion were people who should be kept as far away as possible from the public spotlight, namely Edwin Vassallo, the person who fancies himself Malta’s final frontier against the evils of gay marriage. Really, the whole thing showed such staggeringly bad political judgement it’s suspicious.
9. Don’t be insistent and stubborn even when you know you’re losing.
The worst part of all this is that you can just imagine what happened during the PN parliamentary group meetings behind closed doors in the run up to this vote. Therese Comodini Cachia must have been screeching her disapproval but instead of listening to her, Delia and his gang must have emboldened their resolve. “What does this woman know about politics? We can’t look weak by changing our minds. Let’s call her bluff.”
Komplu sejrin hekk…
10. Stop saying no to everything.
This doesn’t mean PN should stop criticising government. It’s the Opposition’s constitutional role to criticise government. But to do this effectively it must simultaneously frame itself as a better alternative with positive ideas. When Muscat accused the PN government of corruption at Enemalta, he did it within the context of skyrocketing energy bills, while presenting his party’s plans to lower prices. PN cannot keep pointing at things the government shouldn’t be doing – like giving leave to IVF couples. It must come up with positive suggestions that show better vision for the country. In this case it should have been simple enough: PN should have proposed ways to improve IVF in Malta so couples do not have to resort to going abroad in the first place. Either that, or found something more important to talk about.
11. Don’t project your worst insecurities onto your competitor.
This is what really takes the biscuit. Delia and his advisors seemed to believe this motion could put pressure on Labour’s parliamentary group to decide on sensitive matters like surrogacy and embryo freezing. But if Labour were to call Delia’s bluff and present amendments to the Embryo Protection Act (something that’s already in the pipeline), this is much more likely to expose a rift within PN than a rift within Labour. PN simply doesn’t have the moral authority or party unity to accuse the government of dragging its feet on these sensitive matters when it cannot even get a third of its parliamentary group to back its own motion.
Bonus. Never destroy your own brand.
In the leadership race that elected him, Adrian Delia projected himself as a challenge to the establishment. By virtue of being an outsider, he had the chance to start from scratch and bring a desperately needed new way to the Nationalist Party. He was the only person from the three other leadership contenders who could conceivably demonstrate a change in direction. But his actions in Parliament yesterday achieved the very opposite – reminding the nation of PN’s reluctance to support social liberal change, a key factor for their vote haemorrhage of the past decade. This regressive action causes irreparable damage to his own brand of change and will make it increasingly difficult for him to convince anybody of his intention or ability to turn PN into a winning horse.
What do you make of PN’s actions in Parliament? Tell us in the comments below
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