Alex Borg wants to bring a “winning mentality” back to the PN – and he believes that, as someone who has “always managed to beat the Labour Party”, he is the person to do it.
The prospective PN leadership candidate was interviewed by The Malta Independent on Sunday as the leadership campaigns for who will succeed Bernard Grech at the helm of the PN continue.
Asked why he should be the PN’s next leader over Adrian Delia, Borg said that the PN has a choice before it: “either look forward or choose to maintain the status quo”.
“I believe that out there the people and the PN’s supporters are asking for us to look forward, and I believe that I am capable of offering that,” he said.
At 30, Borg would be the youngest person to lead a political party in Malta’s history – something which he’s said is an advantage, but something which others may find a disadvantage.
“I don’t feel that this should be a hindrance,” when asked if his age might prove to be a sticking point with voters.
“I think that if a politician is humble enough to be surrounded by people who are technocrats, who are not yes men but see the best interests of the country and not what a politician wants to hear – then that politician can make decisions in the best interest of the country and which revolutionise our society. That’s what I am doing,” he said.
He said that in his political career he has always managed to beat the PL, citing his personal electoral result in 2022, the party’s results in the European Parliament and Local Council elections in 2024 – where the PN achieved a majority of votes in Gozo, and patterns in surveys where the PN has remained ahead of the PL as examples.
“This is the mentality that I want to implement into the PN on a national scale: a winning mentality,” he said.
He said that he would approach a general election with a “dynamic and energetic leadership team” and that he wants to create a party “which is open to everyone: open to ideas, open to thoughts, open to criticism” that welcomes people with different lines of thinking.
“Whenever the PN was an encyclopaedia of ideas which ultimately had a common denominator, it was always a winning party, and that is what I believe that I am capable of giving to the PN – hope, a winning mentality, and modernisation,” he said.
He said that the PN today, according to the latest surveys, is 40,000 votes down, but noted that there are 70,000 to 90,000 people who are non-voters – “political orphans”.
“Who has the best chance of convincing this segment of people to start slowly moving towards the PN? That’s why the party needs to look forwards not backwards, and that’s why we need the party to win not in five years, but now, in the next election,” he said.
Was there an agreement between Alex Borg and Adrian Delia?
Borg will be contesting against someone who many considered to be his political mentor – ex-party leader Adrian Delia. It was widely reported that the two had agreed that they would not contest against each other, yet in the end they did.
It reportedly added a sour note to their relationship, and there remained questions over whether this agreement actually existed: in interviews with the Times of Malta, Borg said there was no such agreement, while Delia said that there was.
Asked which was the case, Borg did not give a definitive yes or no answer, instead saying that he has always believed that in a democracy the best thing that there can be is a choice.
“I made this choice for the party’s interest not my own or for my own personal ambition, but because I genuinely believed that the PN today needs this generational change and to have this winning mentality again,” he said.
Undeniably though, the first choice for many after Bernard Grech announced he would step down was PN MEP and European Parliament President Roberta Metsola. She opted to stay in Brussels, opening the way for Borg and Delia to contest for the post – but does Borg feel like he and his colleague as something of a second choice?
“Roberta Metsola is doing exceptional work as President of the European Parliament. She could not come here and leave that role especially in critical global moments, so we aren’t the second choices. We are the choice that members have,” he said.
“There is a choice between two friends and whatever the members choose, we will follow whoever the leader is,” he said.
A PN with Borg as leader: Sustainable economy, sustainable planning, changes within the party
The buzzwords of trying to be as inclusive of different ideas as possible are certainly not new for the PN – even if the success with it has been minimal.
Asked what he would do differently in order to actually succeed in attracting more people to the party, Borg said that first and foremost he would not hole himself up at the PN’s headquarters in Pieta.
“I believe that the PN leader should, at most, be there once or twice a week. The role of the PN leader is to be in the streets, meeting social partners, going to political clubs, going on house visits, as this is the type of politics that gives good results,” Borg said.
There is more to it though: Borg said that the “mentality, vision, thinking, and message has to be different”.
Firstly, the party needs to have a “positive message”. This doesn’t mean only praising the PL, as one of the Opposition’s role is to hold the government to account, he said, but at the same time people are now expecting the PN to show where it wants to take the country in the future.
“The people are thirsty for an alternative,” he said.
He said that the country’s biggest economic sectors were the result of the PN’s vision – which the PN had then continued to build upon. “That’s what the PN needs to offer: to recognise and build on what was done right by the PL and expand into new economic niches,” he said.
He mentioned Artificial Intelligence (AI), e-Sports, and the Trans-Shipment sector as examples, and said that the country’s passports scheme also needed to be improved so it can have a “long-term effect on the country, and not reduce the Maltese passport to being a simple transaction to someone we’ll never see again”.
This interview was held before the government announced the scrapping of its golden passport scheme and resultant expansion of the citizenship-by-merit system.
Borg said that planning is another area which needs focus, and it’s an area where he wants “sustainable progress”.
“Progress. which amalgamates the environment and development in the country: I don’t want uncontrolled development, I want sustainable development which complements the country’s characteristics and identity,” he said.
But what about the internal party structures? He pointed out that the past 12 years have shown that the PN’s struggles aren’t likely to be solved by a simple leadership change, pledging more roles within the party, a revamp of its media arm, and special care to the party’s finances.
A pledge he has already made is for the appointment of a technical committee to draft up a financial recovery plan for the party.
Administering that recovery plan would be a person in the new position of party CEO. “This will be someone apolitical, so never in politics, but someone with some political background and a commercial background, whose role will be to deal with the party’s financial state and execute the recovery plan,” Borg explained.
He would also re-introduce the party having two deputy leaders, with the newly-created role being for a Deputy Leader for Parliamentary Affairs.
The secretary general meanwhile will be given the role of maximising the work of the sectional committees, with Borg saying that he wants to enhance their role within the party.
Revamps are also planned within the party’s media arm MediaLink, where Borg says there will be a “specific social media team” to target audiences on different social media platforms.
“This is the restructuring we need for a more effective party. It wasn’t always the leader that was the problem but there is a need to restructure ourselves and reengineer ourselves to be adapted to today’s realities, and to have a more coherent and stronger message that gets to everyone. That’s what I will do in the first 100 days if the members give me their support,” he said.
PN financial woes are solvable because party has assets – Borg
The PN’s financial woes are well-known, if perhaps not well-documented considering that the party has failed to publish its accounts for several years.
Borg has already committed to publishing those accounts within the first 100 days of his leadership if he were to be elected and his expert audit committee will come up with recommendations for how the PN can maximise its income and get on the road of financial recovery.
“The PN always mentions that it has debt – but it never mentions the assets that the PN has. It has a substantial and enormous amount of assets which makes good for the debt that there is. So if we can maximise the party’s assets, the party’s income will grow,” Borg said.
Asked whether he could quantify the amount of debt that the party is facing though, Borg said that he does not have a clear picture because he is not the party leader.
Next year marks the 10-year point from when the party’s ċedoli scheme started. This is a scheme from Simon Busuttil’s leadership of the party, and saw the party enter into a private agreement with individuals who lend it €10,000 for 10 years against an interest payment of 4%.
Those 10 years are up in March, and those individuals have the opportunity to stop contributing under this scheme and to be paid back. When asked if he could guarantee that those who choose to stop contributing would receive the money owed to them, Borg said that the party Secretary General had informed him that the majority of people would be continuing with their contributions.
There will be some people who will not be continuing though, Borg said, and he said that the technical committee that he has appointed has already given him a guarantee and peace of mind that what is owed can be paid while the party continues to function.
‘Chaos’ and snap elections: can the PN win the next election?
The next leadership election will bring the fourth change in leadership within the PN in the last 12 years – the same amount of changes in PN leadership that there had been in the 73 years before 2013.
The PL has mounted a billboard campaign describing the situation in the party as “chaos”. Asked whether he thinks that’s the truth, considering the PN’s internal woes in the last decade or so, Borg said that the people out there do not believe that it’s the PN creating the chaos.
“If the Prime Minister, like he said he would if there is a leadership change, will announce a snap election – this isn’t something which happened this year alone. From 2013 till today, we never had a government that finished its full legislature,” Borg said, as he noted that even now Prime Minister Robert Abela is speaking about calling a snap election.
“I’m sure that the real reason behind a snap election is not the Opposition, because it’s not the Opposition which is creating chaos but it’s because this is a Labour government which is afraid of its majority. It’s only thought is of power,” Borg said.
But can a PN with Alex Borg as leader win a snap election? Borg thinks so.
“Yes. I believe that if we pull one rope and build what we truly believe in and solidify as an opposition, even if the election is within a few months, we are capable of attaining a positive result,” he said.
“I’m not going to come in as if it’s something temporary so we lose the next election and see what happens later. I’m coming in to win,” he said when asked more broadly whether he thought the PN stood a chance at the next polls.
The PN as a party has been at an ideological crossroads, as it has found it difficult to contend with the PL’s wave of progressivism within the context of its more conservative leaning history.
Asked where he thinks the PN should align on the political spectrum, Borg said that the PN has “always won when it was in the centre” and when it was an “inclusive party which welcomed all ideas”.
“We have our values, our principles, and our statute which gives us guidelines of how we need to act and what we believe in, but we were always an encyclopaedia of thoughts and ideas,” Borg said.
“We have environmentalists, and those who are pro-business and pro-construction; those in favour of hunting, those against it – but that’s the beauty of the PN: that we are an encyclopaedia of ideas who look at what is best for the country. Every time the PN was at the centre and held people at the centre of its politics, it was always a winning party – and that’s what I want to build upon,” he said.
“Every time the PN had an end goal it always won the election,” he said, adding that he wants to build enthusiasm around the party as it focuses on what he believes the Maltese and Gozitans want: “sustainable economic growth”.
Borg has ruffled feathers in the past for coming into conflict with certain NGOs – he’s mentioned some like Repubblika and Occupy Justice by name – and insisting that the party needs to distance itself from them.
Asked whether he still held the belief that the party needs to move away from NGOs such as these, Borg said that he had made himself clear in the past.
“NGOs today have an effective and important role in our society and in every democracy […] but a party is bigger than an NGO,” Borg said.
“It has an essential role in a democratic society. The PN is the only alternative to the PL. It is the only party that can beat the PL,” he said.
“The PN has the role, yes, to be against corruption and to keep the government in check to ensure that it is following its electoral mandate, but at the same time the PN has the role to gain votes, address people’s views, and offer a better vision,” he said.
“That’s why the PN is much bigger than any NGO: it sets its own agenda. This is the type of politics I want: one which respects civil society and NGOs who are doing effective work – but at the end of the day where the final decision is of the PN itself,” he said.
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