Nationalist Party MP Mario Galea has called on leader Simon Busuttil to give up his parliamentary seat once a new PN leader is in place.
In a lengthy Facebook post, Mr Galea panned Dr Busuttil's "authoritarian" style, said he should now "be quiet" while the party picked his successor and claimed unnamed "prima donnas" with no political experience had been allowed to hijack the PN.
He called on Dr Busuttil to follow in his predecessor's footsteps and quit his parliamentary seat once a new leader was in place Doing so, he said, would ensure Dr Busuttil did not "remain in the shadows" of the PN's new leader.
Just one of the four men running to be PN leader, Chris Said, is a sitting MP. Should either of the other three candidates - Alex Perici Calascione, Adrian Delia or Frank Portelli - win the contest, they will have to find an MP willing to give up their seat for them to assume the role of Opposition Leader.
We will soon have a new leader and I therefore believe he should keep quiet and stop taking important decisions which bind the party.- Mario Galea
Mr Galea said he had a great deal of respect for Dr Busuttil, calling him "an honest man who made great sacrifices to leave the European Parliament and assume a great burden", but also made it clear he vehemently disagreed with his "authoritarian" leadership style.
Mario Galea did not mince his words.'Rubber stamp'
He slammed the current leader for having turned the PN parliamentary group into a "rubber stamp" assembly which was expected to fall into line behind the leader's position.
"The parliamentary group should not meet to discuss issues which the party has already taken a public position on," Mr Galea said, noting that PN MPs only found out about Dr Busuttil's alliance with Marlene Farrugia's Partit Demokratiku from the press.
He said the PN's electoral campaign lacked a strategy and that the PN had handed the Labour Party "a walk over".
Return to conservatism
The veteran MP pushed for the PN to ditch its liberal posturing and said he was all for MPs being given a free vote on ethical issues - something PN MPs were denied during the marriage equality vote - and also called on Dr Busuttil to lay low for the final weeks of his leadership.
"We will soon have a new leader and I therefore believe he should keep quiet and stop taking important decisions which bind the party," he wrote.
'Prima donnas'
A stung Mr Galea said that he had been "ignored and shunted aside" by the PN after 25 years of service, and lashed out at "prima donnas" who had been turned into "gods" out of favouritism, despite their political inexperience.
"These people need to be reined in...they think they know it all," he fumed, having written that "they say there were cliques during Gonzi's time. The real clique exists now."
He said PN secretary general Rosette Thake was "imposed" on the party, with other candidates ordered not to apply for the job.
"We ended up with a secretary general who didn't know the party and a party which didn't know her," he wrote.
Reconciliation
Mr Galea also said the PN had to rope in people who had given the party their all but been allowed to retire and step aside. He expressed dismay that "honest people" had been turned into political "lepers" because of their association with Eddie Fenech Adami or Lawrence Gonzi.
"The Labour Party gathered everyone. We, by contrast, threw people out."