When Adrian Delia magnanimously announced that he would be accompanying Simon Busuttil and Jason Azzopardi to court the day after being elected party leader, my heart sank. Whatever for? I thought (although, of course, I already knew the answer). In extending moral (and legal?) support to Busuttil, Delia was hoping to show ‘those of little faith’ that his loyalties and political heart lay in the right place and that he would continue to fight the ‘good’ fight.
Despite the obvious display and show of unity, there was no doubt in my mind that Delia also wanted to be there. After all, he could easily have made all the right noises ‘off stage’ and still stayed away. And he could have done so on the pretext that the proceedings were ‘in camera’. His willingness to bury the hatchet and let bygones be bygones was admirable, but because his battle cry for a ‘new way’ had called into question many of Busuttil’s own past battles, I still found his presence incongruous.
The fact remains that in the weeks prior to all this, whenever Delia spoke of a hidden hand hijacking the party and dictating its agenda, he was making a blindingly obvious reference to Daphne Caruana Galizia. And, of course, her agenda of agendas was Panama, the cause célèbre she had pushed, shoved and dictated before all others ‒ a tactic, arguably, that was to cost her and her candidate the general election. And yet now, only months later, here was the newly elected Delia committing himself to prolonging that same Caruana Galizia/Busuttil campaign. Why? And why from a man who had just insisted that the party’s agenda would from henceforward be dictated by nobody?
As bizarre as it seemed to me at the time, Delia obviously felt it was the right and proper thing to do (in the circumstances): for the leader of the party and the Leader of the Opposition both to speak with one and the same voice. But Busuttil did not return the courtesy. His decision to give Delia his space and not be present at the Granaries for the party’s eve of Independence Day celebrations was seen by many as a snubbing of Delia’s first public appearance and maiden speech. This no-show was made even more conspicuous the following day by his showing up at St John’s Co-Cathedral in a front row seat as Leader of the Opposition – a seemingly calculated move that left Delia three or four rows behind. Clearly there wasn’t enough space for two Opposition leaders.
It gets worse: Delia is still unable to enjoy the luxury of a middle row in political life. In fact, he has spent his first few weeks as party leader in the very unenviable and uncomfortable position of not even having a parliamentary seat of any kind to sit on (as opposed to a leg to stand on). Yet if there is a person with the ability to take this sort of difficulty without sitting down, it is Delia.
Delia is clearly unwelcome and unwanted by many of his peers
A Facebook friend of mine once compared him to a cactus. Now, while I don’t imagine the reference was a complimentary one, I happen to believe that it is not without a certain justice. Cacti, you see, have a tendency to adapt to anything and can survive even the most hostile of environments, even one in which a parliamentary seat is not forthcoming. Delia is clearly unwelcome and unwanted by many of his peers.
I wrote this over a week ago. I usually write my articles closer to publication, but I knew I was going to be away and I didn’t want to have to think of Malta, and especially Maltese politics, while I was away. A week may be a long time in politics, but clearly this wasn’t one of those weeks.
I find now that nothing much has changed. Delia is still chair-less (spell check keeps wanting to change that to hairless, hence the hyphen), but he seems now all set to inherit Jean Pierre Debono’s item of parliamentary furniture. Things therefore on a personal level may not be quite as hairy for Delia as they were; but at PN and party level they’re still acrimonious enough.
Yes, I returned to Malta to find the Delia appointment as divisive as ever. He is being depicted as someone unworthy of occupying the moral upper ground (an elite enclave regarded by the more ‘blinkered’ members of the party faithful as every PN leader’s natural habitat). My own feeling is that PN stalwarts taking issue with Delia need to ask themselves whether their current coolness (antipathy?) towards the man is theirs and their alone. Under ordinary circumstances (and had Delia not been ‘targeted’), I suspect they’d actually have been quite ‘cool’ – in the American sense – with their new party leader.
And what should this tell us? Perhaps not that unfair targeting makes Delia suddenly virtuous (and yet he’s an amiable enough fellow) as the others; but that the ones currently not in the line of fire are not necessarily in a state of grace themselves. And I use the word ‘currently’ pointedly.
Certain sitting PN MPs hitherto enjoying popular support (and never before deemed unworthy) have already lost their lustre on account of being Delia supporters. And others could so easily follow, even without an ongoing ‘stockpiling of information’ (to use fellow columnist Claire Bonello’s phrase) against them. Hapless rank and file MPs, who today may be dismissing the whole shebang as ‘Delia’s problem’, will discover how truly devastating (and career-destroying) it can be to be dumped by top brass and, worse, avoided by lifelong friends, colleagues and supporters.
The truth is that anyone and everyone can be targeted. You just have to want to do it. Such is the power of those who are in possession of information, and, more sinisterly, who are able to craft damaging narratives out of practically nothing. It’s Orwellian.
michelaspiteri@gmail.com