Former Cabinet minister and PN general secretary Louis Galea has confirmed that Eddie Fenech Adami had confronted him in 1997 over talk of party leadership change, but insisted he had not been involved.

“Taking a critical stance of all that goes around me, including what Fenech Adami said and did is one thing, but my loyalty to his leadership ought never to be put in doubt,” he wrote in a letter to Times of Malta (see page 15).

Dr Galea said the meeting took place on September 8, 1997 when Dr Fenech Adami called him at his office at the PN headquarters in Pietà. The former Speaker, who now sits on the EU’s Court of Auditors, said he had “categorically denied” being behind a drive for change.

“I categorically denied this and informed him that isolated voices had been mooting the issue.

“Some weeks before, I had been approached by an individual, whose name I shared with Fenech Adami, who had raised the prospect with me.

“I listened but did not encourage or entertain the idea in any way,” Dr Galea said.

He was reacting to comments made by the former PN leader in his autobiography Eddie: My Journey, launched on Friday.

The PN had lost the election by 7,000 votes to the Labour Party, led by Alfred Sant, almost a year before the incident in question.

Dr Fenech Adami said he assumed “full responsibility” for the defeat and his initial reaction was to step down. However, several friends urged him to reconsider, not least the late Fr Peter Serracino Inglott, and after receiving an overwhelming vote of confidence at the general council, he stayed on.

Dr Fenech Adami told Dr Galea that in his opinion the Sant government was already running into difficulties and the PN had to be prepared to face an election in the near future.

Dr Galea said he agreed with such an assessment, insisting that he was not pushing for an internal shake-up.

“Stoking ‘the flames of change’ seems to be an irresistible part of my make-up,” he wrote, insisting that he had not put his weight behind any move for a change in party leadership.

The PN led by Dr Fenech Adami won the 1998 and the 2003 general elections when Dr Galea was appointed education, culture and employment minister.