A debate over whether former Nationalist Party leader Adrian Delia should contest on the 7^th electoral district or on a district somewhere in the south of the island for the next general election is ongoing within the PN’s internal structures.

Sources close to the party told The Malta Independent that it still hasn’t been decided whether Delia will, besides contesting on his home district, contest the 7^th district or another, more southernly district.

The sources said that a process is ongoing between Delia and the party to see which district would get the most votes for him and for the party as a whole.

It isn’t clear which option out of the two is favoured by the party, or which is favoured by Delia.

Delia has already been confirmed as a candidate on the 8^th district – a district which includes his hometown Birkirkara, where he has also distinguished himself in the past as the president of the town’s football club.

It is a district which the PN won by around 7% in 2017 and which includes the traditional PN strongholds of Balzan, Lija, and Iklin.  The bulk however is made up of Birkirkara, which the PN lost hold of in the 2019 local councils’ election.

Maltese electoral laws allow a candidate to contest on two different districts, although they will have to make way for someone else on one of those is they get elected in both districts.

It’s a practice frequently used by smaller parties with a limited number of candidates so that they can cover all bases, and by the larger parties so that they can utilise their major vote-pullers in two different places.

With Delia’s position on the ballot sheet of the 8^th district now confirmed, the debate now centres over whether he would be best placed on the ballot sheet in the 7^th district or in a district in the south.

The 7^th electoral district is made up of Żebbuġ, Dingli, Mġarr, Mtarfa, Rabat, Baħrija, and Tal-Virtù.

The PL won the district quite comfortably in 2017, with a lead of around 3,500 votes – equivalent to just over 14%.

The two candidates who the PN elected from in this district were initially Beppe Fenech Adami and Jean Pierre Debono.

Fenech Adami however resigned his seat, having also been elected in his home 8^th district, and left it up for a casual election – which was subsequently won by PD candidate (contesting under the PN banner) Godfrey Farrugia.

Debono meanwhile held onto his seat until the October after the election, when he resigned (as did Peter Micallef who won the subsequent casual election) in order to make way for none other than Adrian Delia himself. 

Meanwhile, the other choice at hand is whether Delia should contest a district which is situated to be in the south of the island.

In reality, that could be anywhere between the 1^st and the 6^th district – districts which the PN all faired poorly in in the 2017 general election.

Indeed, the PN only managed to win 3 seats out of 15 in the 2^nd, 3^rd, and 4^th districts (Stephen Spiteri, Mario Galea, and Jason Azzopardi respectively – although Carmelo Mifsud Bonnici was later elected in the 4^th district owing to the activation of a constitutional rebalancing mechanism).

The 5^th district (Birzebbuga, Kirkop, Mqabba, Qrendi, Safi, Zurrieq, Ħal Farruġ) was a very poor showing as well, with the PN getting only 33% of the vote there – although both Hermann Schiavone and Toni Bezzina were elected.  

Current PN leader Bernard Grech will be contesting on this district, meaning that Delia contesting here is probably highly unlikely.

The 1^st district (Valletta, Floriana, Hamrun, Marsa, Pieta, Santa Venera) and 6^th district (Qormi, Siggiewi, Luqa) were the southern districts where the PN performed best – with 41% and 39% of the vote received in each respectively.

PN leader Bernard Grech – who took Delia’s place after a drawn-out internal conflict led to a leadership election last year – admitted on Sunday while being interviewed by Labour Party media that the two were still at an impasse.

“I want Adrian Delia to contest on a particular district… we will work on what is best for the party in the circumstances,” Grech said, citing his own decision to contest on the 5th district as an example of that.

“I’m not happy yet, no,” Grech admitted when pushed to confirm that there was no agreement yet.

Delia himself reacted to his party’s leader’s speech on Sunday in a Facebook post, where he would not damage the party and that he had always gotten the party’s and the country’s interest before his own.

“That’s why I am going to contest the general election on the districts where there is most need for me to give what I can,” Delia wrote.

Delia had said in a Xarabank interview last October – when he confirmed that he would be running in the 8^th district – that he may run on a second district but that he would leave it up to party structures to determine which.