What is the PN today? A motley group of individuals who have incoherent and inconsistent values
Blog post by Romegas
The current issue of abortion has shown that the PN is going through an existential problem. While labour has rushed headlong to embrace the progressive agenda, the PN has been caught like a deer in the headlights, not knowing whether it should oppose this trend or whether to outdo labour in its progressiveness. As a consequence, it offers nothing worth fighting for to no one.
Let’s take this abortion business for starters. The PN should have the intelligence to realise, and the data to analyse, that a vast chunk of the population remains vehemently opposed to abortion – as the Malta Today (no conservative media outlet) surveys have consistently shown – that the vast majority remains opposed to it across all ages and all socio-economic backgrounds or political affiliation, and that includes the most progressive of the lot: university students – it’s a vote loser – even the most left-wing and progressive political parties have shied away from it.
What’s more – Labour supporters tend to be socially conservative, more so, I would add than their nominally Christian counterparts in the PN, and only put up with their party’s progressiveness either through sheer tribalism or simply as long as the economy is doing well (unsustainably – but that is another argument for another day) – so for the PN to procrastinate on abortion instead of being unequivocal day after day wins it no favours.
But that leads to another of the PN’s problems – whether it stands for European ‘values’ or local ones – as a so-called Nationalist party there shouldn’t be a shadow of doubt where allegiances should lie – but even this has been muddied – having been the party which took us into ‘Europe’ and incessantly bragged about it ever since – the PN is caught, once again between the devil and the deep blue sea – is it Maltese or European (by which I mean promoting EU so-called values)? Are they the same? And if not – where does it stand? From immigration to LGBT ‘rights’ what exactly are its values? How can it square the circle calling itself a Christian Democratic Party, indebted to a shrinking but still massively relevant Christian constituency to stand a chance of being elected with so-called European values which seem to be antagonistic to the same demographic principles that are at the core of the PN’s political ideology?
European values which by observing the deteriorating relationship between the EU and sovereign countries such as Poland and Hungary seem to imply that sodomy and baby-killing are the non-negotiable issues which the EU will fight to the death for! How do these values square with the PN’s traditional Christian basis? How can the PN justify that its MEPs have been at the forefront to further these ‘values’? The reality is that on everything from immigration to ‘minority rights’, the PN is at odds with itself on what positions to adopt, and such hesitancy can only come from a lack of conviction of what it really stands for. Even among its members, there is an unbridgable divide – for they range from devout Catholics to paid up members of George Soros’s Open Society Foundation. So what is the PN? What does it stand for? It is actually hindered further, by this lack of coherent vision since traditionally, its voters, by virtue of their family model, are less prone to tribalism and tend to be more disposed to question what the party stands for. They try to promote it as an umbrella organisation encapsulating these fundamental divisions, hoping simply that united against a common ‘enemy’ will be enough to bring it back to power; but that won’t work anymore and only the blind will refuse to see it.