Nationalist Party leader Adrian Delia sought to look beyond the current challenges to his leadership on Saturday, presenting a forthcoming vote of confidence as an opportunity to unify and refresh the party.
“My job is not to preserve Adrian Delia; it is to preserve the party,” Dr Delia said during an interview on party media. “The party cannot have a situation where the leadership is challenged every few months. The leadership must have a set term to work, just as the government has a term.”
The PN held a six-hour meeting of the executive committee on Thursday night, during which Dr Delia invoked a clause in the party statute for a vote of confidence in his leadership to be taken by the general council on July 27, following a petition for the vote signed by more than 150 councillors.
Dr Delia said he was keen for the discussion to go ahead, but reiterated that the general council could not, in terms of the statute, make or reverse decisions on the appointment of the leader, who was elected by the party membership.
“It would be pointless to have the members decide on a leader only to tell them than 1,200 people [in the general council] can scrap their decision. We’d be turning democracy on its head,” he said.
“Let’s discuss, let’s debate; but then we have to move forward.”
Referring to the appointment, during Thursday’s executive committee meeting, of party grandee and former minister Louis Galea to lead a wide-ranging reform process, Dr Delia said Dr Galea’s remit would be to meet with all organs of the party, as well as with the grassroots, the media and academia, and to report back within a year with a “mosaic of ideas and reforms that can be carried out”.
“We want people to come back to the party and for the party to go back to the people,” Dr Delia said. “It is pointless pointing fingers at the administration, or the executive, or the council. We should all be asking: what have we done for the party?”
Acknowledging that the party was currently at a “low point”, he said there were many who were silent but willing to come forward and help the party improve itself, and that the current process would give them the space to do that.