As I often repeat, this website is open to the contributions of people who have different views from mine, as long as expressed with decency and there is some compelling logic to them. The below was sent in by someone known to me but who must, for professional reasons, remain anonymous. I’m not sure his formula provides a solution and I am sure it would not be the solution I would propose. But it is compelling in its sensibility and, in the current fire that is consuming the PN, there’s no harm in a pause for thought:
When a bar brawl breaks out, the bouncers are very quick to expel the participants. The best interests of the bar’s patrons and the bar itself dictate that. The bouncers do not stop to see who is in the right and wrong. They say – “You want to fight? Take it outside!” Like tango, quarrels takes two. Fights very quickly spread, fast becoming uncontrollable, with the real risk of all patrons taking one side or the other, and what would have started as a tiff between two, fast becomes a full-fledged riot, with the original bone of contention being lost in the mayhem that results.
The Nationalist Party is not a bar. However, it is in exactly the same situation. The clash between two personalities has already resulted in a swelling of the ranks on both sides, and lines are being drawn in the sand, hastily and irresponsibly. The risk is now an all-out melee, with all the party patrons joining in, destroying all that has been so lovingly built over so many years. Just as in the hypothetical bar, none of the bar-louts have any ownership claims over the venue, in the Nationalist Party, no one or two, individuals have the God-given right to destroy, not chairs, tables and mirrors, but a Party, and ideal.
The Nationalist Party belongs to thousands and thousands of people who, over the years lovingly and painstakingly built it up from the foundations of its guiding principles. The Party has gone through revolts in the streets of Valletta, through world wars and the banishment of its leaders to Africa. The Party acquired Independence, fought for democracy through the years of fire in the late seventies and early eighties, and guided our nation to membership of the European Union… and now what? A ‘Goodbye to all that’? And for what?
I appeal to that most basic and rare of senses, the common one, may it prevail. A voice of reason is badly required now, one who will denounce, strongly and rationally, not the Montagues or the Capulets, but both of them. This voice must condemn the feud that they are fuelling and which is tearing the house apart before the irreversible tragedy occurs. And the initial protagonists of this brawl, and the subsequent participants who picked sides, would do well to remember that the Party is bigger than them, than all of them. Making the Party smaller will not make any of you bigger.
It will only put you down in history as names that will roll over people’s tongues in a future expression of distaste. The very people who are now starting to get sucked into this vortex of division will come to their senses, albeit possibly too late, and will eventually curse you – A plague on both your houses. Hindsight will be so useless then, as it always is…
So, with foresight, I, as one of the thousands who holds a minute share in this great Nationalist Party, say now to both camps – take your fight outside, and let the Party BE.