In recent years the Nationalist Party has claimed the good governance mantle. It is therefore no wonder that the section on standards in public roles is one of the longest in the entire PN manifesto. It spans from proposal numbered as 523 to that numbered 541, spread over pages 200 and 201 of the manifesto.

This being the key plank of the Nationalist campaign, one would expect to find this section flawless. And yet this is definitely not the case.

One proposal is numbered 533 and 536 at the same time. This was probably an editing error that was left in the manifesto.

But then scrolling down, one finds even more errors.

• Proposal 534 is repeated, word for word in proposal 538 on the same page. 
• Proposal 535 is similarly repeated as proposal 539.
• Then proposal 536 is repeated as proposal 540.
• Finally proposal 537 is repeated as proposal 541.

So in their key section of the manifesto, PN strategists not only made silly numbering mistakes. They even repeated the same 4 proposals twice. One fifth of the PN’s proposals about standards in political office were in fact just an exercise of copy and paste by external agencies.

The fact that the PN was not able to ensure that it has a consistent section on good governance, which should be its forte, gives a good indication of how shoddy the remainder of their proposals are.