It had to happen, of course. No matter how you look at it, filter it, analyse it and project it, the PN’s debacle in last week’s European Party elections has triggered a frenzied exchange of views as to whether Adrian Delia should accept responsibility for it or, as he indicated several hours after the result, he should opt to stay on to fight another day.
The question as to whether he should go or not can only be answered by Delia himself and his circle of adjutants – the very group that had been fairly and squarely elected by the Party rank and file after the 2017 Busuttil electoral fracas. The fact that, one week on, people are still discussing it shows the decision has already been made for him to remain at the helm of a Party that cannot stop going around in circles, trying to catch its tail. But if you give it some serious consideration, you will realise the PN leader is in a quandary, the likes of which we have rarely seen in modern Maltese politics.
Some would tend to refer to Alfred Sant after the March 2003 EU referendum and the election a month later, but the truth is Sant had already taken his Party to victory in 1996 almost against all odds. The EU membership issue had diluted his leadership after the crushing impact from Mintoff’s joystick flourish.
In utter contrast, Delia’s case falls under the dragging shadow of a small band of losers who will not give up their influence in a Party they had misled and misguided over unsubstantiated accusations that were later exposed and scientifically proven – by top-rated foreign experts – as being false and criminally tampered with.
Neither could anyone compare Delia’s conundrum with that of Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici after the 1987 election. Dr Mifsud Bonnici had taken over from Mintoff in mid-term during one of the worst periods in Maltese political history but, despite the many handicaps, he had almost kept his Party in power, losing only by a mere 4,000 votes after 17 years of Labour rule. After yet another defeat, in 1992, Dr Mifsud Bonnici unhesitatingly resigned.
Go back to the future. Many hinge the question “to go or not to go” to the argument that “it is the right thing to do”. Fair enough but, as every PN stalwart is bound to ask you, who rushes in to take his place? The old guard that first put the Party in the awkward situation in which it is today, or some unknown wannabe? Political strategies do not blindly unfold, for they would otherwise be pie-in-the-sky. I doubt the PN rank and file, those who have been through thick and thin for the Party, would want to see a return of those who cost it its credibility and trust among the electorate.
They know that allowing their Party to be usurped by the old faction undermining the present leadership would be yet another step forward into the abyss. They also cannot let themselves be impressed by newspaper polls so obviously manipulated by that same faction. It is perhaps time for Delia and his team to call a spade a spade rather than coming up with empty vocabularies words to justify their position. Being frank with their own supporters and the public at large would work much better than just dishing out plateloads of hope on an imaginary menu.
To go or not to go is Delia’s dilemma. Getting out of the labyrinth has to be his prime objective and that requires guts of steel. He failed to show he has any when he was threatened by a majority within his parliamentary group with being voted out of his position as Leader of the Opposition. When he could have confronted them, saying: ok, you won’t have me as Opposition Leader, but you can’t defy the Party’s rank and file and remove me from the Party leadership, he chose to appease, forgetting his commitment to a new way – and to play ball with the very people who still want to oust him.
The EP election result will continue to haunt him, as will the harbingers of doom casting their evil shadow on his every move.
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Flashes of decency
How many times have we had appeals for Maltese politics to be transformed from a boiling cauldron to a serene arena in which views vary considerably but those who hold them are fellow human-beings with common hopes and aspirations for the country? Sadly, the culture of hatred has, for far too long, been embedded in the national body politic and over the decades (during which I have covered, in one way or another, 10 general elections, four European elections, two referenda plus the local council elections) there has never been a sign that the mentality was changing for the better. For it takes two to tango.
It would be unfair to say that, in both the distant and near past, there have not been individuals who have done their best to instil a better understanding of the need to wrench politics out of the venomous bubble in which it has always been kept by players in the game who knew no better. These individuals include frontline exponents and even Party leaders. The previous generation to mine, for example, often spoke about the mutual respect Dom Mintoff and Gorg Borg Olivier – rivals since their student days – had for each other while their supporters were busily tearing into each other in the streets.
I personally witnessed the calm and mutual respect shown by Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici and Eddie Fenech Adami in 1987 when, as duty manager then running the State Radio department, I greeted them at the TVM studios for a united appeal for calm at a time when the election result had not yet been announced and Party supporters were on virulent tenterhooks. Both came in cool-headed, willingly submitting to the usual pre-transmission ritual before we hit the air. There was even some pleasant banter that helped ease the whole process.
All this came to mind when I read about Nationalist EP candidate David Stellini’s gesture towards fellow Gozitan Josianne Cutajar, who had just been elected to the European Parliament in Labour’s fourth seat. He shared her invitation to “thank you” meetings in Paola and Gozo. Stellini, who has since announced his resignation as an MP, also publicly offered his congratulations, saying Gozitans were proud of Cutajar’s achievements.
Flashes of decency such as these give one hope, only to often see it fizzle out at the first hurdle. Finding a better way of doing politics is an issue that has long been desired and then immediately forgotten when the going gets rough tough. There was instant hope of a breakthrough when Adrian Delia took over the PN leadership with his promise of a ‘new way’, only to see him succumbing to the daily tantrums of his bitter predecessor. Sadly, what Joseph Muscat managed to do on assuming the Labour Party leadership way back in 2008, Delia could not emulate. The man was simply never given the chance to instil a new spirit in his Party, let alone everyday Maltese politics.