“The party statute clearly states that the party leader is appointed by its members for a term, and I feel obliged to see out that term, and I have no pressure to do otherwise”, embattled PN leader Adrian Delia told journalists on Wednesday.

Delia was speaking less than 24 hours after almost two-thirds of his own parliamentary group voted against his leadership of the PN in a meeting which dragged on into the early hours of this morning.

Nonetheless, Delia has insisted that he will stay on as the party leader, using the fact that he was elected to the post by the party’s paid-up members (tesserati) as a justification for him not to leave.

“The party statute clearly states that the party leader is appointed by its members for a term, and I feel obliged to see out that term, and I have no pressure to do otherwise”, he said.

Asked whether he felt that there is a lack of faith in his leadership given the MP’s vote, Delia replied in the affirmative but again cited the member’s voting procedure.

“If we have a procedure made before I was in politics that the choice is made by the members… if I have 6 to 7,000 members who made their choice twice what do I do? Tell them that 19 people negate their vote? I need to respect their votes – I need to be consistent and if there is a lack of faith from those who elected me then I need to see what steps to take”, Delia said.

“I feel that I am obliged to continue my work – and I will keep making every single effort and speaking to every person to convince them that it is in everyone’s best interest to work together”, he said.

Delia said that he does not anticipate there being any issues in working with the parliamentary group, even if almost two-thirds of them do not support him anymore.  He said that the parliamentary group had always continued to do its duty and scrutinise the government’s work and come up with constructive proposals, noting that he was sure that this would continue.

When it was pointed out that the constitution – which provides a mechanism for the President to remove Delia as opposition leader if he has lost support – over-rides the party’s statute, Delia said that the constitution has not come into play so it is pointless discussing the matter.