It is, arguably, the highest point for the Nationalist Party in the last decade.

There has been one defeat after another at the polls for the PN since 2013, growing bigger each time, and the party’s relevance has often been placed under the microscope.

Last Friday’s judgment in the hospitals’ deal case has rekindled some spirit in Nationalist quarters. It had been quite a while since so much enthusiasm and euphoria were witnessed in the corridors of Pieta.

It is definitely a victory for Adrian Delia, who single-handedly kept on pushing the case to have the three public hospitals, which were passed on to the private sector in 2015, returned to the public.

He filed the lawsuit when he was still Opposition Leader and, even then, his own colleagues kept their distance, perhaps believing that he was asking for too much or simply not wanting to be seen next to him at a time when they were plotting to have him removed from the leadership.

He has been vindicated, and some of those, who were so much against him, were sitting behind him last Friday when the PN organised a press conference to talk about the judgment. Others congratulated him on social media, maybe privately too.

It is certainly a defeat for the Labour government. The judge had harsh words for the way the government acted before and after the agreement was signed, and the government was humiliated for the way it dispensed of public property, which has now been returned under its umbrella.

The government appeared to know what was coming. In the days leading up to the judgment, it went to great lengths to say that, whatever the outcome, the medical services will continue to be offered and that no jobs would be lost. It was anticipating that the judgment would not go in its favour, and tried to limit the damage.

Prime Minister Robert Abela is now defending himself saying that he was not even an MP when the deals were signed. The court annulled four agreements, he said, and all were reached before he made it to Parliament.

What Abela did not say is that, under his tenure and since he took over from Joseph Muscat, his government kept on giving taxpayer money to the private company running the hospitals. In the Budget for 2023, some €80 million had been allocated.

The government kept up its side of the bargain under Abela and continued to defend the deal in the face of the mounting criticism against it. Its MPs voted in favour each time the estimates of the Health Ministry were brought up before the House. Yes, the deal was signed in 2015, but the Abela government continued to endorse it.

To be fair to Abela, he is now constrained to face a sticky situation that was brought on him by Muscat, very much like the greylisting of Malta by the Financial Analysis Task Force which happened under Abela, but which was a result of what Muscat’s government had done.

The judgment, most of all, is yet another blow to Joseph Muscat and his protégé Konrad Mizzi. The agreement to transfer the hospitals was signed with Mizzi as Health Minister and Muscat as Prime Minister, and although the whole Muscat administration gave it the go-ahead, these two must be singled out for being the protagonists behind the deal which has now been rescinded.

It is yet another black mark on their political contribution to the country. Both are out of the scene now, with Muscat resigning unceremoniously in the wake of the investigation into the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia and having been given the title of man of the year in organised crime and corruption in 2019, while Mizzi will always be remembered for his Panama company and for first having his ministerial portfolio taken in one legislature and then resigning in the following one. But their responsibility for what they did in 2015 remains.

The matter will not, or should not, end with Friday’s judgment.

There have already been calls for action to be taken and for all those involved to be questioned. The police and the Attorney General have been put on the spot in this regard. One will have to wait and see how they will respond.

On the political side, the Nationalist Party will aim to ride on this victory for as long as possible, and will be pushing to see that those who were and are politically responsible for the deal take the blame.

The government, for its part, should not take the defeat lightly. It is not enough to say that it all happened under a different Prime Minister.