It’s war, Jeff – but not as we know it

These are tough times to be in the Nationalist Party trenches, it would seem. If you're not lampooned as a throw-back to the pre-Enlightenment age of 'Religio et Patria', the chances are you will find yourself accused of not being 'Catholic' enough.

As usual in such cases, the battleground is Facebook: that much-maligned social networking site that certain self-styled media gurus would like to reduce to a "an ephemeral medium that has no impact on the real world".

And yet that's where it's all happening: from unabashedly hostile and internecine clashes between Nationalist candidates accusing each other of betraying the party ethos, to online activism urging the party to rediscover its 'forgotten' Catholic identity.

Matters seem to have come to a head this month with the sudden emergence of a fully-fledged lobby group named 'The Catholic Vote': ostensibly aimed at lobbying in favour of Catholic politicians and against 'secular liberals', regardless of political party or colour.

Having swum into the social mediascape only around a month ago, The Catholic Vote already boasts just over 1,000 members. It is naturally debatable how many of these members know they have been added, still less how many necessarily agree with the group's views. Suffice it to say that Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando (the MP who was instrumental in the introduction of divorce last year) is also a member, despite being the subject of often aggressive criticism within the same group.

So is Jean-Pierre Farrugia, a Nationalist MP who is likewise targeted for his apparent support for embryo freezing.

And yet both were lumped together with Labour MPs in a list of politicians Catholic voters should boycott: "This group is an important forum for all those who choose Christ first before all other human Gods," one member observed. "People like JPO, Mugliett, JP Farrugia, Joseph Muscat, Evarist Bartolo, Michael Farrugia, Deborah Schembri, should not get our support."

It is however a safe bet that several of the group's less partisan adherents do feel at home with its official aims, which (to give full due) are described by founding member Peter Vella as follows:

"We are a movement of true Christians who do not want a theocracy in Malta but we want our country to remain a beacon of hope for the rest of Europe. We are true conservatives and we hold no allegiance to any political party. We will support only those candidates who prove themselves in action and in words. We oppose liberalism including gay marriages, embryo freezing, abortion, Christianophobia, euthanasia and anything that goes against the family such as divorce and pornography. We oppose any individual or party that supports any of the above."

But for all its claims to hold 'no allegiance' to any party, the Catholic Vote seems to have only one party fixed firmly in their sights... and it isn't
Labour or AD.

If there were any doubt that the budding movement considers itself an extension of the 'true' Nationalist Party, consider only the following quote by Alan Deidun: himself a former PN candidate for the MEP elections, and an active TCV member who has single-handedly added a sizeable portion of the group's current membership:

"I think that we should be ambitious before presenting ourselves with authority in front of the PN - i.e. we should aim to get 5,000 members and thus a strong voice/lobby group - 'x'tahsbu' (what do you think)?"

Moreover, this week Peter Vella announced that Labour MP and former minister Joe Debono Grech - known to be a fervent Catholic who opposed divorce last year - had been removed from the group for "advertising his credentials as a politician and candidate".

"This is not permitted," Vella warned... though the same Vella seemed to see nothing wrong with his group being used to advertise live streaming of NET television and Radio 101, both owned by the Nationalist Party.

But how seriously are politicians taking this new initiative? Very, according to the group's administration.

"We got a message from an MP today. He asked who we were," Vella commented. "He seemed more concerned than interested. I suspect he is appearing in this group under someone else's name as he seemed to know a lot about us. We did not answer him. Politicians seem to become very concerned when they don't understand what is happening..."

Some politicians are however less impressed than others. Pullicino Orlando himself - who variously stands accused on that site of 'disintegrating the traditional family unit', and working tireless to introduce abortion, euthanasia, etc - did not disguise his open disdain when drawn into debate with Deidun.

"The party you and your ilk want is an ultra-conservative party which, frankly, the mainstream voter will find suffocating and overbearing," he said in an online exchange with Deidun. "Good luck to the Nationalist Party if you have your way. The party you want is a throwback to the bad old days when the PN was reduced to a branch of the local Catholic hierarchy, something that even genuine Nationalists like Ugo Mifsud Bonnici (il-Gross) resisted in the 1930s, George Borg Olivier also stood up to the Archbishop when the occasion called for it - refusing to accept that the Church should interfere in purely civil matters. When I read what your 'vision' for the party is I, frankly, shudder...

"Note," he goes on, "that I specifically mentioned the 'local Catholic hierarchy' and not the Catholic Church. The local Catholic hierarchy has been interfering in politics and turning believers away from it for over a century now. No one has a divine right to impose his beliefs on others. No one has the right to use spiritual pressure to retain his temporal powers. Not only is this way of thinking harming the party it is also turning people against the Church. That's a pity because many genuine clerics have done an inordinate amount of good in our society..."

And in what is increasingly coming to resemble civil war within the ranks of a PN evidently still suffering from an identity crisis, and reeling from the shock of last year's divorce referendum, TCV's reply was equally hostile and withering:

"JPO is a wolf who hides in sheep's clothing," Vella said while reposting his comments on the group's wall. "His views are very extreme. He has done enough damage to society. He has no respect for Catholics. He tries to sew (sic) division by dividing the Church into Hierarchy and another imaginary Church. He is the worst form of enemy to society, he claims to be Catholic yet is not in action. He wants to water down what authentic Catholics understand to his soup of confused liberal concepts..."

And all along, while radicals on both sides challenge each other over the true meaning and purpose of the party they all claim to support, the same fundamental questions over the PN's identity and ideological direction only seem to grow harder to answer with each passing week.

Christian conservative, or secular liberal? A political party cannot realistically be both things at the same time... but that has evidently not stopped the PN from trying.