PN’s financial challenges ‘urgent but not unresolvable’ – Said

The financial challenges faced by the Nationalist Party must be dealt with immediately, former justice minister Chris Said, who hopes to be elected as the party's secretary-general in the coming weeks.

In an interview published in Illum last Sunday, Said said that if he is chosen for the role, he will work closely with other officials, especially the deputy leader for party affairs, to draw up a strategy which will lead to the party's financial sustainability.

Said, who is the sole contender for the role, said that new PN leader Simon Busuttil has already taken the first step to addressing the issue by establishing a commission led by Raymond Bugeja, which will recommend the best ways for the party to support its media and commercial arm in a sustainable way.

He also said that work has started on a number of initiatives to ensure all employees concerned will be paid within an acceptable timeframe.

Said admitted that the issues faced by the party are not trivial, and that it never before has had to deal with these types of challenges. Apart from the financial problems, which he believes can be resolved through collective effort, Said includes winning back the faith of people who voted for Labour for the first time during the elections held last March as another of the PN's concerns.

"The party must work with the thousands of people who chose not to vote, and also make contact with Labour voters who are or will be disillusioned by the way the current government is running the country," he said.

"I'm certain that no other administration in the country's 50-year independence has faced problems as large as the ones faced by the PN government during the 2008-2013 administration."

Among these, he included the global financial crisis which hit a few months after the 2008 election, the unrest in North Africa, especially Libya, which began in 2010, as well as internal problem's within the PN's own parliamentary group.

He cited these problems as a possible reason why not enough focus was given to maintaining better contact between the party and the public, adding that re-establishing dialogue was the way to make the PN more inclusive.

"PN must take a snapshot of Maltese society as it currently stands and base its politics on this, without going astray of the PN's basic principles," he said.

When asked about the former administration's negative relationship with the media, Said said that whoever is secretary-eneral must strive to change this, and maintain the best relationship possible.