The Nationalist Party told us on Monday evening that, just like that, the bitter infighting between the factions supporting party leader Adrian Delia and his predecessor Simon Busuttil has now been “resolved.”

The situation is, in our opinion, anything but resolved.

The first takeaway from all this – and this had been pointed out ad nauseam on the social media and the comments boards – is that Delia backed down from his original call for Busuttil to suspend himself. It could mean a number of different things. Maybe Delia realized that his original decision was rushed, that he should have thought things through before shooting from the hip. Maybe he realized that too many MPs were against him on this, and realized that he had no option but to swallow his pride and backtrack on his original decision.

Whichever way one looks at this, Delia’s leadership comes into question once again. Delia has been consistently criticized for failing to take full control of his party, with a faction that has proven to be a constant thorn at his side. But this latest turn has taken things to another dimension.

Surely, many of his supporters disagree with this decision which, they would say, makes their leader appear even weaker than before. His detractors will undoubtedly use this to their advantage.

What we are witnessing now within the PN is, in many ways reminiscent of the infamous Sant-Mintoff struggle within the Malta Labour Party in the 90s. That situation was also brought about, in part, by the fact that a former leader refused to leave, to make way for someone new.

Delia, who was democratically elected using a system introduced by Simon Busuttil, was never really given the chance to show his mettle.

The honourable thing would have been for Busuttil to do what Lawrence Gonzi did before him, and also resign from Parliament after the 2017 election disaster.

To make matters more complicated for Busuttil, he has now lost his Good Governance portfolio, and will likely not be give a replacement, meaning that his future role in the party will be somewhat ambiguous.

From the snippets of information that are coming out of Stamperija, it seems that neither man has the support required to lead the party. This newspaper is reporting today that most of the MPs who challenged Delia’s decision to suspend Busuttil had no intention of deposing the party leader or to reinstate Busuttil to his former role. It seems that a number of MPs believe that the best way forward is for both Delia and Busuttil to step aside and for a new leadership election to be held.

Delia and Busuttil will be meeting face to face this week, and there will probably be some PR stunt to show how the two have patched things up and are ready to move forward, together.

But it is clear that not all is not well at Dar Centrali, and no one is really swallowing this talk of the conflict being “resolved”.