Any Nationalist sympathiser wanting to find out what was happening with his party’s shambolic leadership contest on Wednesday night had no option but to turn to the political adversary’s own television station to get a contorted version of the unfolding events. The party’s own media blissfully ignored the world right inside its own foyer. As for Labour’s One, it did not need to spin the chaos at the PN headquarters. The events just unfolded in painful gushes right before everybody’s eyes.
As irony would have it, it was also the day that news came out thatPN leader Simon Busuttil had been appointed by the European Parliament to sit on a panel of experts tasked with examining the suitability of those nominated to the roleof judge or advocate-general in the EU court.
One can only hope he’d do a better job than his party has done inaccessing the suitability of its leadership candidates.
There was a ray of hope earlier in the week when the party’s administrative council appointed, at the eleventh hour, a consultative council on ethics to examine the candidates and, especially, Adrian Delia, who has faced a deluge of accusations by blogger Daphne Caruana Galizia particularly with reference to a property in Soho, London, and to a bank account in Jersey. The impression was that the PN was finally moving, decisively. It turned up to a damp squib.
The ethics committee cleared three candidates – Chris Said, Frank Portelli and Alex Perici Calascione – but when it came to Dr Delia, it said he had failed to give a satisfactory explanation on some of the allegations made and that doubts remained. And, yet, all the administrative council would do was ask Dr Delia to reconsider his position.
Dr Busuttil threw his weight behind the administrative council saying that had he been in Dr Delia’s position, he would withdraw from the race. It was a clear message to party councillors voting in the first round of elections.
Dr Delia was defiant. Drawing a leaf from Donald Trump, he said this was a ploy by the “party establishment” to get him out of the race. Fielding questions late at night, he refused to name this “establishment” and avoided any questions that would have seen him rub Dr Busuttil or the other contenders the wrong way. He is a smooth, even convincing talker, but it did not change things.
He defied the party he wants to be chief of.
The PN must now be hoping that its councillors would get it out of the mess it got itself in. However, it is not Dr Delia who is the real problem.
When Dr Busuttil resigned, very few were prepared to step forward to take his place. The choice presented is lacklustre, with Dr Delia being the most colourful of the lot. The thousands who voted for the party felt let down that no front liners came forward, like they had already written the next election off.
The next flaw was the lack ofcandidate vetting and then the acrimonious back-stabbing and party-beating when the campaigning got under way.
This week, the PN had the opportunity to put an end to this charade, to call off the election and start again later. It decided the show must go on, and it will.