Nationalist Party leadership candidate Bernard Grech has been a paid-up party member since 2017 and consequently his bid is in line with the minimum two-year membership requirement, his spokesman has said.

Questions on Grech’s eligibility were raised on Facebook in the wake of a short video clip featuring remarks he had made last December on current affairs programme Xarabank.

Back then Grech had said that “tribal politics” of red against blue had to stop.

“This is the reason why to date I never formed part of a political party,” he remarked.

It turns out that Grech, who in the coming weeks will be pitting himself against incumbent Adrian Delia in a leadership contest among the 20,000 PN members (tesserati) had enrolled in the PN as a life member in 2017.

The clarification was made by a spokesman for Grech, in reply to questions on his eligbility from Times of Malta.

Bernard Grech's life member tessera (membership card)

While saying that his membership number is 2170696, the spokesman confirmed that if the leadership candidate had not been a paid member for at least two years, his bid would have been disqualified already.

“The Commission has therefore confirmed that Dr Grech is eligible to contest the election, and it proceeded to forward his candidature for the due diligence process that follows,” he said.

Party members supporting Delia’s re-election had pointed out that according to the recently approved PN statute anybody aspiring to fill a post within the party structure must be a paid-up member for at least two years.

Consequently, they were interpreting Grech’s remark on Xarabank as either exposing his ineligibility or else that he had “lied” when saying he formed part of no political party.