Matters at the Nationalist Party seem to have come to yet another pretty pass, with the business dealings of its leader Adrian Delia once again raising eyebrows, while also weakening the moral authority to speak out against the unbridled behaviour of the government he is supposed to be keeping in check.

The news that the law firm in which the Opposition leader is a shareholder in a fiduciary firm that worked on a bond issue for the Delimara power station’s former lead developer Gasol - during the time in which he was active in the company, he only resigned his directorships upon being installed at Dar Centrali - is worrisome.

The fact that the firm held the client - well before Adrian Delia had hardly even envisaged a role for himself in politics, let alone that of Opposition Leader - is not the troubling aspect here.

Nevertheless this, of course, will provide ample grist for the mill for government acolytes and trolls but we should make one thing clear from the outset: no crime has been committed here and anyone of that particular political stripe would be ill-advised to tread into that minefield.

There is no comparing like with like here. There is no comparing this legitimate, yet questionable, fiduciary set-up with the opening of secret companies and trusts in Panama and New Zealand.

But while it is true that there was nothing illegal about the firm having had this particular fiduciary relationship, it should also be appreciated that the new post-Panama papers times in which we are living demand new scruples, new levels of accountability and new thresholds of transparency.

This is, as they say, a whole new ballgame and it’s called good governance.

Having said that, what is troubling is the fact that Delia did not deem it fit to have declared the situation, which constituted a very clear and present conflict of interest given his party’s previous harsh stance on all things related to the ElectroGas project at Delimara.

The fact that a law firm in which one holds a stake in turn holds a single share in a company involved in the shady power station deal would not normally be an item on any declaration of assets and, needless to say, that share or his firm’s work with Gasol was not declared.

But, as we said, this is a new reality that needs to be grappled with.  Delia himself may not have even have been personally involved in the bond issue, but the law firm in which he is a leading shareholder certainly was.

And with Gasol having been the talk of the town between 2013 and 2015, it is very difficult to imagine that the name did not ring a bell in the leader’s mind, or in the minds of any of his fellow associates who may have worked on the project.

This was, after all, one of the most talked-about deals the country has seen.  The Delimara power station was the very cornerstone of the Labour Party’s 2013 general election campaign and it has long been the PN’s bête noir.

This was, and still is, an issue of such political sensitivity that the Opposition leader’s ignorance of his firm’s involvement, no matter how small, beggars belief.  It would have been far better to have declared this back during his leadership bid instead of having this come out now.

In such matters, when there is no culpability but when suspicions and accusations are bound to be raised, full disclosure at the outset is always by far the best policy lest the past comes back to bite you.  And when you fail to do that, your moral authority to take others to task for far graver conduct is eroded piece by piece.

And if, on the other hand, Delia had no idea that his firm was dealing with a name like Gasol given the associated political connotations, one wonders how that same person will manage the manifold interests of a political party or of a government for that matter.