You will have heard how foresighted the Nationalist Party has always been. Every PN leader boasts of that at one time or another, and there are many times or others at which they do it. They will never let us forget it.

For instance, they like reminding us that it was the PN that gained independence for Malta from Britain. It was indeed an achievement, and the man who managed it, Gorg Borg Olivier, was eventually kicked out of the party leadership. Such is life in politics.

They also like reminding us that it was the PN that took Malta into the European Union, much against the Labour Party’s inclination, though that disinclination was quickly shed off, so that today the PL is proving very meticulous at getting what it can out of the EU.

Unlike Borg Olivier, Eddie Fenech Adami reaped much glory out of his successful EU membership strategy. He even went on to be made President of Malta. Such also is life in politics.

But for all its vaunted foresight, the PN is today in a holy mess, barely seeing anything beyond its nose, if at all. It has a leader whom many want to ditch, but they cannot find their way of how to do it cleanly and quickly. Heading the tide against Adrian Delia is his predecessor as leader, Simon Busuttil.

The tide however has been no tsunami. Delia soldiers on, in spite of all the bile that has been thrown at him. Busuttil and his cohort still rattle and rasp. All that has been achieved by the venomous and spiteful in-fighting is a historically bad loss at the polls.

The latest gimmick is a petition aiming to oust Delia. I am basing myself on reports carried on Monday and Tuesday this week. The reports do not say who is behind the petition, though I bet it is no one who backs Delia.

It could be Busuttil, of course, but doubts have been raised about the validity of the petition, and maybe that is why Busuttil has not been linked to it – Busuttil, you see, is a lawyer.

According to Monday’s report, the petition calls for a secret vote by the PN’s councillors on whether the party leader should take political responsibility for the almighty drubbing the PN got in the European Parliament and local council elections last month.

Now I am one who believes that Delia should make way for another at the party’s helm. He carries too much baggage, he is not an asset. But he must not go because of the results of those elections. If he is to go, they should throw something genuine at him. They should be honest about why they want to behead him.

Those election results were terrible – almost granting PM Joseph Muscat his dearest wish, that of surpassing Pawlu Boffa’s 44,104 record majority of the 1947 universal suffrage election. Muscat came close to it.

But terrible as those results were, it must not be Delia to be blamed solely for them. He cannot be said to have lost those elections. Sharing the blame equally with him must be Simon Busuttil, who did his best with his disloyal team of MPs to cut the ground from under Delia’s feet from the early days of Delia’s election as party leader. Instead of helping the leader, Busuttil has been undermining him, with the tacit blessing, apparently, of Eddie Fenech Adami and his successor as PM, Lawrence Gonzi.

There has been hardly any let up in the internecine warfare between the two sides in the Nationalist Party. There was a lull for a few weeks leading up to the elections, but that was all. Delia could hardly make any headway in such a situation - not against the well oiled Labour electoral machine and the undeniably steady hand at the rudder of the ship that is Malta.

The Nationalist Party must find its way. The country needs that. And not to save democracy, as former PN election candidate Ivan Bartolo pompously put it, his head obviously in the clouds. Dang it, every time Labour is in government in Malta, the Nationalists want to save democracy.

Save it from what? It was the electorate that saved democracy in 2013, from the shambles of the last Gonzi government.

 

This article was submitted by Mr Mifsud to The Times of Malta on 26 June, but was not published. It is being published today by The Malta Independent on Sunday as originally submitted to The Times of Malta.

Roger Mifsud is a retired journalist.