I am writing this at 3pm and voting in the Nationalist Party general council still has three more hours to go (and five till the announcement) but I can confidently say that by the end of the day Adrian Delia will still be the leader of the Opposition and of the PN.

He would still have been the party’s leader if the voting had been by those who originally voted him in – the party’s paid-up members – or rather the percentage in his favour would have been even higher.

The matter is now settled, at least until the next general election. Those who voted in favour of Delia have closed their eyes to the worst electoral result obtained by the party in its long history, the many mistakes committed by Delia and his core in the election campaign, and the many mistakes committed by Delia, notwithstanding his personal involvement and campaigning, in the campaign.

There was not, at least as far as I could tell, any calm, reasoned debate on what is wrong with the party and why so many people have turned their backs on it. Nor was there a reasoned debate on how the party can face up to current issues. All I could see, in a campaign managed surreptitiously by unseen hands which remain among the most dangerous elements in our democracy, is Delia, Delia and Delia.

The debate was not about issues at all. It was about regicide, about the attempt to knock the king off his throne – King Adrian. And the party has now been forced to side with the king against his opponents.

In his speech, Delia shamelessly appealed to emotion, waxing lyrical about how so many years ago, as a representative of the MZPN in Birkirkara, he had addressed a PN meeting and how he has always been in the party. Other PN supporters his age took a different path – look at Tonio Fenech, for example, who went on to become Birkirkara’s mayor in the years when PN was in power before becoming an MP, parliamentary secretary and later minister. Adrian Delia may have been a Nationalist but he chose his legal office and his business instead – that business that came back to haunt him when he was persuaded to run for PN leader.

But, as has happened in other areas in recent history, an attempt at overkill may have pushed more people to support Delia. Speaking to colleagues on Tuesday or Wednesday I said: “Wait for the bomb.”

It came right on cue on that week with the revelation of Delia’s personal finances, taken it seems from some court papers. Predictably, it inflamed people and may have even led some undecided voters to back Delia, although most people’s minds were made up by then.

It is very much like what happened with Arriva – a good and bold idea turned into a nightmare as a result of ineptitude.

Now he is welcome to it all – the prestige, but also the dodgy party finances; he and his merry band of close supporters who pushed so hard these past days. Maybe, I don’t know, it helped them in their personal lives.

But for the vast hordes that still consider themselves to be Nationalists, this was all a big charade which has not made the party any more electable. And they, not the party big-wigs, have to face the ribbing, the over-bearing attitudes, if not the transfers once they return to work on Monday.

 

Tree-huggers united

Maybe more people will turn up at the tree protest today than there were at the PN general council yesterday, which would indicate the birth of a new Opposition in place of the jaded old one.

I have been writing in favour of the Attard bypass for years, even before it was named Centre Link and turned into one mammoth project with a massive cull of trees.

To all the tree-huggers I say: try and join the traffic jam every morning in Attard as hundreds of cars struggle to pass through the narrow bend, or the other traffic jam that paralyses the area surrounding the US ambassador’s residence.

 

Culhat al Belt

It is not right that fantasy or political bias substitutes historical reality. Actually, it is dangerous.

In the series Culhat al Belt, being aired on TVM, distortions and omissions have crept in.

The series described the grain importers led by Cassar Torregiani as out to raise the price of grain and thus of bread. But historically, Cassar Torregiani was so struck by the poverty around him that he offered to sell grain at less than its market price. To thank him, the rabble broke into his house and ransacked it.

And the episode I saw did not mention that many of those who went to Valletta came from Cottonera and the dockyard and had been inflamed – or radicalized, as we would say today – by the Communist hard core around Manwel Dimech.

But of course Manwel Dimech, today with a statue in front of Castille, is a saint and untouchable.