There is a disgusting situation going on right now in the Nationalist Party.
More than a month after becoming party leader in a hard fought but fair election, Adrian Delia is struggling because a considerable number of his MPs will not lend him their support.
These are cowardly MPs who are afraid to publicly and directly say that they do not hold allegiance to their leader but then do everything they can to undermine his every step and to lash out at him indirectly through venomous Facebook posts.
Delia won the second round of the leadership election with 52.7%, which means that he was not the first choice for just under half of the tesserati (paid up members.) But that also means he was the choice of the rest which, in a democracy are called a majority. That choice can be questioned, it can be debated, but it has to be respected.
Unfortunately this is not what we are witnessing from several nationalist MPs who are supposed to be part of the party that a few decades ago fought a bloody battle for democracy in this country.
Now that democracy, freedom of speech and the rule of law are once again under threat, these same MPs would rather put sticks in Delia’s spokes rather than unite under a single banner fighting for a noble cause.
One has every right to dislike Delia and to disagree with his ‘new way.’ But PN MPs have no right to undermine a democratically elected leader. The rules of the game are simple: you are in or you are out. We have already written this a couple of weeks back, saying that those who cannot seem to accept Delia as their new leader have a few options before them, including that of leaving the party honourably.
It is a shame that these people could not get past their ego and their selfishness and refused to walk beside their leader last Sunday, even if they later made sure they were picked up by the TV cameras.
This was a time for unity, for the party to show strength in the face of this new threat, not a time for personal agendas.
In a political party there will always be differences of opinion, personal ambitions and animosity between certain individuals. But these should be overcome by an overarching aim – in this case the fight against corruption and for democracy.
MPs should have rallied around this cause, putting their differences aside. Alas, this opportunity was missed and personal agendas continue to eat away at an already shattered party.
As we said once already, these individuals are only ensuring that the nationalist party remains unelectable at the polls. And that means that their best chance would be to once again sit on the Opposition benches come next legislature.
Having said all this, Delia should have attended the protest regardless. We are speaking here about a show of unity not putting up a show for the cameras. If Delia truly wanted to be there because he felt that his place was with the people, he should have attended, even if without wingmen.