So, according to Louis Galea, it is wrong to empower the party membership to vote for the party’s leader. So wrong, indeed, that the membership elected Adrian Delia, he said.

I can just hear Delia squealing “Ajma”.

Galea was answering rather weak questions fielded by Herman Grech, who did not press him much on this subject. Grech could have asked who it was who elected Simon Busuttil, and did Galea think Busuttil was the right choice? After all, Busuttil too got a thrashing by Joseph Muscat. And retained influence on some of the party MPs to egg them on to rebellion against Delia.

But Grech’s most glaring omission was not to refer to the party leadership election of Britain’s ruling Conservative Party. Their choice for leader has been whittled down to two candidates, and the leader will be elected by the 160,000 members of the Conservative party. Perhaps they too will make a mess of it.

Grech seems to be unaware of what is going on in the UK. Now for a journalist, especially from the elitist Times of Malta, that is something horrendous.

And wasn’t it incredible to ask Galea if he was prepared to take over the PN if Delia resigned?  Grech seems to be living on the moon. Galea has much heavier baggage to carry than Delia, from his time as minister.

Of course, had Grech been interviewing a Labour Party representative, he probably would not have been so soft. The PN, for all its faults, is the darling of the Times of Malta and Grech is among those who admire it the most.

The trouble with our television interviewers is that they do not prepare themselves properly for such “shows”. They seem to carry out no research on who they are interviewing – if Grech had done so he would not have come out with that howler about Galea taking over as party leader.

 

Peter Borg

Rabat