There was once a political party, the glorious PN of old. It conquered, triumphed and set the pace of a nation. It sped us up to join the modern, vibrant world. Today it’s a party in tatters, a party on death row.
Executions usually happen suddenly. Bang, you are shot; or electrocuted; or guillotined. You are immediately freed from life. The PN is bleeding slowly but surely. It is rudderless and bankrupt of ideas, vision, leadership and funds.
And what is worse is that it is now also made up of people – not just the leader and his coterie – who are clueless, guileless and lack the guts to do what needs to be done.
If the main rotten component – its leader – remains there, the party can never regain ground and win back support or a vision. Adrian Delia has no future in Maltese politics: he should never have had a present either. His presence in politics has been heading for failure from the day his leadership campaign kicked off. His past has been his doom. But beyond that his choice of people and methods was doomed to fail.
The Pierre Portelli saga is one to study, sigh and cry about.
He was hailed by the party as the one who would revive it, give it wings and a much-needed return to good media ratings. He came from the media so he was seemingly the right man to lead that part. He did not just fail abjectly, he did worse. He turned an already-bleeding enterprise into a total disaster. The ratings are abysmal: radio ratings are down to such bad figures that Radju Maria has a better following.
Portelli was also in charge of strategy, proving how abysmal Adrian Delia is at judging characters and their potential. The only potential of the ones he chose was to cause mayhem, confusion and build sieges within the crumbling fort called PN.
Portelli also attacked The Times merely to unleash a useless war—something The Times, thankfully, did not wage. For absolutely no reason he attacked, and uncovered, Manuel Delia as having ghosted Adrian Delia’s writings – and by trying to hurl abuse on the journalist and activist caused more damage to his own cherished leader.
Portelli’s final letter of resignation was all about revenge, hatred and war. I have never read a letter where you give up your position – for failing – and act so unresignedly.
Adrian Delia’s other chosen ones are still there – clinging on and egging him on to keep up his new way mantra.
The new way has meant the loss of elections and the people’s trust. It can only be remembered for what it was: a fatuous bubble of self-praise with no credentials or philosophy.
Adrian Delia came from nowhere, promising to conquer new ground, reach consensus and open the door to all. He should have remained nowhere in politics as he could never deliver anything and, in fact, didn’t. Or maybe the only thing he did was deliver the PN to the depths of failure.
All this while Malta flounders in dirt, metaphorical and actual: a country mired in an economic boom which is non-sustainable and built on sand and dust. It’s a country that has lost all its values and proper guardianship of the rule of law. We have a country which is turning into a chaotic jungle of traffic and filth and that is talked about in foreign lands as a mafia-fed laundromat.
Yet the party in opposition is a party of colossal flops. During a parliamentary group meeting, the majority – it has been rumoured – had given an ultimatum to the leader to step aside or else. But the only order they executed is their own. They flipped at the eleventh hour and flopped monumentally. The PN MPs will also go down in history as scaredy-cats when they could have been heroes. Now they will be remembered as lackeys, has-beens.
The PN is on death row. It could have had a reprieve and the inner members could have saved the day. It is said that a country gets the government it deserves. It also gets the opposition it deserves: a soulless, petty and gormless one.