There cannot be many who are smiling in the Nationalist Party these days, except maybe Simon Busuttil and those in his camp, who did their best to make it hell for their party leader, Adrian Delia.

For months they fought him tooth and nail, and it was obvious that Delia had no say with a considerable weighty wing of the party. The bloodletting was made in public too.

There were casualties on both sides in what became internecine warfare, and the war was not only disloyal, it was also vicious. It was the Nationalist Party that suffered the worst.

Why the war was launched remains a mystery to me. Perhaps Busuttil resigned the party leadership after the thrashing he got in the 2017 general election in the hope he would be asked to stay on. Or perhaps he genuinely felt that Delia could not be good for the party as its leader, carrying baggage as he did, which was heavy ammunition for the Labour Party to use.

But Delia had been elected by the party organs and I do not know that Busuttil did anything to chastise them for it. If he did, he did so in private, unlike what he did against his leader.

Simon Busuttil seems to have huge firepower at his disposal

Mind you, I have no insiders in the PN to feed me information.

Delia must go, of course. He has not cleared his name of the charges laid against him by the scurrilous blogger that was. But it seems he has said he intends to plod on as leader, so I do not think there will be any burying of the hatchet. If anything, the warring may get worse.

Lately, there has been a ceasefire – at least I was not hearing any thunder. I imagine that was for the run-up to the European and local elections. Which shows how devious Busuttil can be. But if Delia sticks to his guns and remains leader, I think the lull in the warring will break down and it will thunder again.

Delia has shown himself to be a weak leader, as proved when he accepted Busuttil’s defiance of him when the former leader did not suspend himself from the parliamentary group as he was told to do on the conclusion of the Egrant inquiry. But maybe now, his electoral fortunes having been scuppered by Busuttil, so that he lost more ground against the Labour Party, Delia aims to thwart any plan Busuttil may have to have him replaced as leader.

Busuttil seems to have huge firepower at his disposal. That both former prime ministers Eddie Fenech Adami and Lawrence Gonzi never said anything about the claws that were tearing the Nationalist Party apart with Delia as leader, indicates to me that they agreed with what Busuttil had been doing.

And my thinking was strengthened when I saw the page one advert for the European Parliament election that the detestable David Casa had in this newspaper last week, showing him with both the two former prime ministers and Busuttil, and with Delia not in the picture.

The insult to Delia could not have been more obvious. I don’t need you, Casa seemed to be telling Delia. Casa’s re-election must have hurt, the party grass roots did not stand up for their leader.

In accepting to appear in such a photo Gonzi and Fenech Adami seemed to be aligning themselves against Delia, unless of course if Delia did not want to be seen with them. But is that likely?

Roger Mifsud is a retired journalist.

This is a Times of Malta print opinion piece