Crouching Simon, hidden Mario…

At a glance, things seem to be going swimmingly for the Nationalist Party in its first few months as the Opposition.

First off, last week's leadership election proved to be a far more contentious race than previously expected. And while this may undermine the authority of the incoming leader Simon Busuttil (who literally scraped past the minimum first-round threshold to be elected), the same division paradoxically also bodes well for the future prospects of the PN as a whole.

After at least a decade in which the party was straitjacketed by a 'one size fits all' mentality, there is now evidence of a healthy discussion taking place behind the scenes. So what initially looked like a shaky start for Busuttil also reaffirmed that the Nationalist Party is still very much alive as an organisation, despite earlier indications to the contrary.

Even more significant was the fact that the so-called 'liberal' faction, spearheaded by Mario de Marco, proved to be far stronger a force than many had reckoned in the preceding few years. Such was the strength of de Marco's performance, in fact, that Busuttil felt compelled - presumably in the interest of keeping the party from fragmenting altogether - to create a whole new administrative position, with a view to keeping the former tourism minister's 38.5% following firmly within the fold.

This is all good news for the PN, as it clearly means that Simon Busuttil has parted company with his predecessor's habit of simply ignoring all critical voices within his own party and surrounding himself with flatterers and yes-men.

Besides, for purely mathematical reasons, the PN simply could not afford to carry on alienating roughly half of its own support base and still expect to win elections.

One way or another, Mario de Marco had to be accommodated in the party's highest echelons if the PN was to have even a fighting chance to regain some of its lost support. But at the same time, the inclusion of de Marco on the leadership team may also result in unforeseen difficulties for the already-beleaguered PN.

Casper strikes again

As Simon Busuttil himself pointed out in an interview with MaltaToday two weeks ago, the fact that his own leadership election was such a hotly contested affair proved crucial for the PN to regaining the respect of a disillusioned electorate.

In his own words, "The PN needed a strongly contested election... The worst thing that could have happened was to have another uncontested race. That would have meant the opposite: that the party would have emerged a loser..." (MaltaToday, 14 April)

Apply that same reasoning to Mario de Marco's elevation to deputy leader - now little more than a formality, in the absence of any other contenders - and it seems the PN is all the way back at square one, with decisions taken secretively behind the scenes and simply rubberstamped by party delegates who exist only to do their leader's bidding.

Worse still, the same situation also re-evokes the embarrassing image (thanks to Joseph Muscat, when he was still opposition leader) of Gonzi running against 'Casper the Friendly Ghost' in December 2011.

In a sense, then, the repetition of this farcical state of affairs simply rolls back the great stride forward taken by the PN just the previous week, and by Busuttil's own yardstick, the party now appears weaker and less assertive as a consequence.

Win big, lose big

Meanwhile, the coalescence of previously 'antagonistic' factions into a single leadership triumvirate also entails a possible danger for the long-term political survival of the party as a whole.

Admittedly it is far too early to make reliable predictions; but given the sheer extent of the voter deficit to be overcome in just five years, the hidden danger now facing the PN concerns the price that the party would have to pay for electoral failure a second time round.

If Simon Busuttil's ascent to the leadership disappointed 62% of former Nationalists who voted Labour in the last election - as indicated by our survey on Sunday - how much greater will the disappointment be if even the combined efforts of Busuttil and de Marco fail to turn things around in 2018?

This is now the dilemma facing the PN: with literally every faction now somehow included in its multifaceted leadership team, a second successive defeat in five years' time would also leave the Nationalist Party with a leadership vacuum that could well prove impossible to fill. Practically all the party's potential leadership material would emerge battered and bruised from the fracas, and unlike the situation in 2013 - when the party could afford to turn around and blame its outgoing leadership for the result - this time round there would be simply no one left standing to serve as a convenient sacrificial lamb. The entire party would be tainted by the stench of defeat in one way or another. There could well be no coming back at all from a defeat of such magnitude.

Having said that, the alliance could ultimately cut both ways. Just as the cost of failure would be too high to even contemplate, victory would not only vindicate the much-maligned Busuttil but also unite and energise the PN to a degree we have not seen since its pivotal victory in 1987.

In the end, however, Busuttil's 'no guts, no glory' decision - that is, to combine all the party's strength for one massive electoral push in five years' time - remains a gamble... and gambles, as we all know, cannot ever be risk free.