To many, yesterday was the Nationalist Party’s day of reckoning but in actual fact that day is today as the dust settles on Adrian Delia’s not-so-impressive showing at the party’s general council polls. At the end of the day, the 1,500-strong council backed the post-2017 election beleaguered leader to remain on as Leader of the opposition, for better of for worse.

Either which way it went, the party was to today face its real day of reckoning, its latest in the somewhat tattered history it has suffered since 2013. It will now face the challenge of everyone having to fall foursquare behind Delia, who will continue to sip from the poisoned chalice that is the Nationalist Party’s stewardship given, its waning popularity and its rather bleak electoral prospects.

But here is the thing.

The party’s leadership is a poisoned chalice if the only thing one is looking for is solely electoral victory for the party and for themselves, and no one can be blamed for fostering such a mentality given this nation’s all-encompassing, winner-takes-all political sweepstakes that we are treated to every five-odd years. 

But is this really the be all and end all?

If one looks at the party’s leadership as an opportunity to bring something good back into politics, to well and truly take the fight to the government benches where it really belongs, instead of infighting among the opposition benches, to hold everyone accountable for their actions, to drag every corrupt state deal through every legal remedy on the face of the earth, to make sure that punishments are duly meted out and to ensure that the nation’s wealth is equitably distributed – then the chalice becomes a little less of a poisoned one.

The Nationalist Party absolutely needs to extricate itself from this mindset that winning elections is the only thing that politics is about. Yes, the endgame is to take power and to instil the policies that one believes will work for the nation, but it is not the only thing.

And as such, it simply beggars belief when one hears of politicians talking about biding their time, waiting for the right moment to enter this or that fray and of fearing speaking politically too soon. If someone has something to offer to their party, and to the nation in the process, they should very well be standing up and offering it.  Strangely, we did not see to many people coming forward offering to fill the void that may have been left in the wake of Delia’s departure.

You do not enter only contests that you know you are going to win.  You also enter the contests you know you are going to lose as well, because the fight has to be fought and because someone has to fight it.

That is the hallmark of a real politician, a statesman and of a person cut out to lead a country, and it is the distinction between such altruistic people and the pure opportunists.

And this is basically what Adrian Delia did for the PN. He entered the leadership campaign knowing full well that he didn’t stand a snowball’s chance in that proverbial place of any sort of a short- or even a medium-term hope of electoral glory, and with a very slim shot at any victory on any sort of horizon for that matter.

He has, lest anyone chooses to ignore the fact, not faltered in taking the government to task and to court over every shady deal it has enacted since 2013.

And, objectively-speaking, no one can deny that he has been doing just that – even though his name had been tarnished before he even got started in politics back in the summer of 2017 – to the best of his abilities, as limited as they are without a full team and a full parliamentary group standing foursquare behind him.

The PN so direly needs is a fresh start, to go back to the drawing board as a united team. That may be difficult for Delia to do given all the various pieces of baggage that he has collected over the last two years.

But if it is to be Delia, the party must back him and it must back him completely because the time for half-baked measures is now over. There have been too many covert and overt rebellions within the party that Delia successfully withstood that his detractors need to also to call it a day and try working together for change.

Now that the dust is settling, the Opposition must be reminded of the solemn constitutional role they play in that having a strong opposition is a main underpinning of a strong democracy. Not only is a strong opposition able to challenge the government and keep it in check, but it is also collaborates with the government and provides essential input on the drafting of new laws and policies.

And as such, the opposition’s role is essential even more so in this current day and age.  The PN must get its house in order, the country and its people – red, blue, orange, green or whatever political stripe – are depending on it.