The Nationalist Party may have reached a new low when on Monday it decided to break away with good internal governance it has always been worthy of and relegated a sensitive issue such as the election to elect its leader into a contest which can be likened to a classroom prefect election.

The Administrative Council of the party met in haste on Monday evening following a request sent to it by one of its councillors on Saturday, just while the early voting process was taking place.

Later that evening we learnt that approximately 10% of those eligible to vote had turned up to vote early. The Nationalist Party felt compelled to issue a press statement on Saturday, half way through the early voting process, to inform everyone that its Administrative Council will convene urgently on Monday to discuss the request.

While all of this smelled fishy on Saturday, what was in store for Monday was a shocking surprise. In a two hour meeting, the Council decided to create a disciplinary body to be chaired by veteran and former PN Minister Louis Galea to investigate, over two days, the allegations levelled by Daphne Caruana Galizia at leadership hopeful Adrian Delia.

During the general election campaign, outgoing PN leader Simon Busuttil,took umbrage at Prime Minister Joseph Muscat after the latter suggested that Magistrate Aaron Bugeja would be held responsible if the election is lost by the PL.

Back then the PN claimed that the judiciary ought to be free of pressures of any sort. Fast forward by three months, back in their backyard, the PN gives two days to its own disciplinary committee to decide the future of one of its four leadership contenders.

The reasoning must have been that while the party cannot ignore these serious allegations, it is constrained by the short timeframe considering that this Saturday around 1,200 councillors will call at Dar Ċentrali to vote their favourite two out of the four.The fact that 10% had already cast their vote was ignored by the Council. 

Surprisingly, the selected members of the disciplinary committee accepted to take on this mammoth challenge and set to work as of yesterday morning. In just two days they will evaluate the evidence, formulate the accusations, gather witnesses, corroborate their evidence and come up with an opinion for the Administrative Council to consider. In the meantime, this newsroom is hearing that other letters were received by the Council to investigate all four candidates, all by Saturday.

Upon seeing such irresponsible behaviour one starts to wonder what is exactly happening behind the scenes. The immediate suspect is that some persons in the PN are trying to stop or postpone Saturday’s contest irrespective of the past 10 weeks during which four contenders invested hefty sums of money, time, effort and resources into their respective campaigns. 

But upon reading the party’s statute one quickly reached the conclusion that neither the disciplinary committee not the Administrative council have the power to pause the election. One also wonders where does the PN’s electoral commission fit into all of this? Should we expect a report by tomorrow before the four contenders go head to head again on NET TV? How many of them will be under investigation by then?

Whether or not Adrian Delia is to be found in breach of the party’s statute and stopped from contesting, the suspicion has crept in that the intention behind this charade was to undermine his credibility, if there’s any left of it with party supporters.

If this results to be the case than the PN needs a break from politics until it rebuilds itself into a credible party worthy of its thousands of supporters.