The Adrian Delia-Dar tal-Providenza incident brought to the fore, once again, the division that exists in the Nationalist Party. Those who thought or were led to believe that his ousting in favour of Bernard Grech had closed a difficult chapter for the PN were wrong. No opportunity is lost by either side to distance itself from the other, and this distance is not getting any narrower.

It all started – or should we say continued? – on 1 January when the former Opposition Leader fronted a donation by a company to the Siggiewi home, which was holding its yearly fund-raising event. The €500,000 promised immediately sparked a heated debate – fuelled by the same people who led the campaign to get Delia out of the PN leadership seat – on the provenance of the money, pushing the home to carry out an investigation.

In the days immediately after the donation, Delia was once again under the microscope by loyalists to Grech and the group that supported the latter’s candidacy. Delia’s defence was that he was just the messenger with the cheque. Eventually, last Saturday, the home announced that it was rejecting the donation because the company chairman “did not provide the relevant information requested from him as part of the verification process”.

To make it clear, it is positive that the home took the initiative to investigate. We believe that this should happen always and in all fund-raising campaigns, not just this one, especially when the amount in question is not ordinary.

What is doubtful is whether the donation would have led to such a verification process had Delia not been the one to present it, and had his detractors not been so vocal in their bid to put him in bad light, as if they wanted to again justify their action to remove him from the PN leadership last year.

Judging by the reaction on the social media in the hours after the home’s public declaration, the anti-Delia faction in the PN appeared to feel vindicated, and there were some who immediately set out to encourage others to donate money in a bid to raise the amount which was rejected by the home.

The New Year’s Day donation gave the anti-Delia faction in the PN, which is still very active, the possibility to target him again. This shows – and this is the subject of today’s leader – that the Nationalist Party’s wounds are far from being healed. The crevice between the two factions is still too wide to believe that there will be any bridge-building process.

What happened showed that the people who worked against Delia are still watching his movements very closely, and are at the ready to pounce on anything he does, which is not to their liking, to denigrate him.

At the other end, Delia’s followers lose no occasion to hit back, and this demonstrates that the two sides are still at loggerheads with each other, even though four months have passed since the takeover.

With Delia staying on as an MP, and the likelihood that he will make it to Parliament again when the election is held, this internal friction in the PN structures will not allow the party to move on.

The voters who are not diehard supporters of either side will find it hard to give their preference to a party mired in so much division.