Any otherwise sensible and politically attuned person who campaigned for Adrian Delia to become leader of the Nationalist Party should by now be undergoing a dawning realisation of something akin to the horror of “Oh my God, what have I done? What a bleeding disaster.”
I’m being charitable here, because I honestly can’t see how it is possible to be politically attuned or even just sensible and not work out how and why Delia’s election and its aftermath would be catastrophic, and why he himself is totally unfit for purpose. But let’s say there are a few people like that. I know one or two, whose personal ambitions have blinded them to all else, though I find it difficult to see how that personal ambition is going to blind them permanently. At some point, as things get steadily worse, they are going to have to face facts.
A survey of public opinion, published last Sunday in another newspaper, shows that the Nationalist Party has already lost a huge chunk of its support. A new leader would ordinarily bring about a retrenchment of support among the party faithful, as they prepare with hope for a fresh start – new beginnings, and all that, lots of enthusiasm, new people attracted to the party, that kind of thing. Instead, Delia’s election as party leader has caused those who voted Nationalist last June to desert the party in droves. Delia himself is trusted by just 22% of the electorate and by 41% of his own party’s supporters. This is completely disastrous. And frustratingly, it was also entirely foreseeable, but a bunch of middle-aged men and elderly men, and some broilers in the Facebook chicken-coop, thought they knew a lot better than anybody else.
Looking back now at the events of just a few weeks ago, from the frozen nightmare of the present, is like looking back at scenes of collective insanity, the madness of crowds, tulipomania. What other explanation can there be for the crazed belief that a 50-year-old lawyer with millions in debts, who walked in off the street after a lifetime of never taking the slightest bit of interest in politics would be the ideal person to become leader of the Nationalist Party, leader of the Opposition, with a view to becoming prime minister?
You have to laugh, except that it isn’t funny. It’s completely mad. One day, people will look back at all this and wonder just how many loose screws there are rattling around in people’s heads on this island, what with the choice of government and now the choice of Opposition leader.
As if those survey results, confirming what so many of us knew would happen as a consequence of Delia’s election, were not enough, the man turned up around one and a half hours late for his own swearing-in as Opposition leader, leaving the head of state, the Chief Justice, the Attorney-General and officials of his own political party stranded at the Palace in Valletta, waiting for his important personage to turn up at leisure. The ceremony was due to begin at 5.30pm, which means he should have been there by 5.15pm at the very latest, and instead he rolled up casually at 6.40pm. The astonishing thing is that the assembled dignitaries did not up and leave, as they should have done.
When journalists asked Dr Delaya about the delay, he deflected their probing with the sort of reply at which this kind of character is expert: “This is a time for unity and not for controversies.” The journalists should have kept right on pressing him, because had there been a valid explanation – for example, he got knocked down by a bus en route and cracked his ankle – he would have had no problem giving it. So obviously, it follows that there was no justifiable reason why he was late, because he sought to hide it. That should have been the cue to pursue him about it.
Malta being Malta, and Dr Delaya being quite detached from reality and apparently believing not only that he can be 90 minutes late for his own ceremony but also that he is invisible in a shopping mall, we soon discovered where he was while all those holders of Constitutional office waited for him: in a clothes shop, buying a suit, shirt and tie to wear for the occasion he was supposed to be at already. This is not disorganisation or mere tardiness. This is sheer, unadulterated nuttiness. You have to ask: “What was he thinking?” The answer to that is important, because this man is the one who is going to run the Nationalist Party into the ground, just when the country most needs a strong and ferocious Opposition which the people can trust. Buying a suit for his ceremony while people were there already and waiting for him comes out of the same psychological black hole as demanding that the Courts of Justice open at 1am so that he can file a libel suit against me there and then instead of waiting until 8.30am (summer hours) like a normal person. And the emphasis there is on ‘normal’.