The Nationalist Party administrative council this evening expressed its full support to party leader Adrian Delia and called upon former leader Simon Busuttil to step down.

In a statement at the end of the meeting, the PN council echoed what Delia had said in an earlier press conference in which he called on Busuttil to suspended himself from the PN parliamentary group, a call that Busuttil rejected.

Nobody is bigger than the party, the country and the truth, the PN administrative council said in a motion that was approved unanimously.

The council was summoned urgently in the wake of the publication of the conclusions of the inquiry about the Prime Minister and his wife, which exonerated them from being the owners of a secret company in Panama.

In the motion approved tonight, the PN administrative council expressed its support to Delia to continue the fight against corruption in an effective way and its support for Delia’s call for political responsibility to be shouldered.

The council called on Busuttil to, in the best interests of good governance, the fight against corruption and party unity to follow the instructions given by Delia earlier in the day and appealed to him to suspend himself from the parliamentary group to allow the party to fight its battles in a more effective way.

The PN council also called on the Prime Minister to removed Konrad Mizzi and Keith Schembri from the respective positions of minister and OPM chief of staff, or else shoulder political responsibility.

Busuttil's reaction

In a shot comment on Facebook, Busuttil again rejected the idea saying that his position has already been made public and that he will continue to work to uncover the truth.