Nationalist Party MPs would now have to face their own failings and could no longer hide behind excuses, outgoing Nationalist Party media chief Pierre Portelli said 12 hours after making his resignation public.

“Now the onus is on them to try and seek a way out of this conundrum,” Mr Portelli told Times of Malta, saying that MPs opposed to party leader Adrian Delia would now not be able to claim somebody was working against them behind the scenes.  

Mr Portelli, who announced his resignation as Media.Link executive chairman immediately after an executive committee meeting on Monday, pointed out that he would not be resigning his seat on the party committee.

“I’ve been elected by the General Council. And I intend to stay on!” he said.

Mr Portelli dismissed criticism that the PN was not electable with Dr Delia at its helm.

“Is the PN electable with the small group of MPs who have been putting spokes in the wheels from day one, in their attempt to retain their influence on the party?” he questioned.

Asked if Dr Delia should call a vote of confidence, he questioned why the disgruntled MPs who have been pushing for it, would not call it themselves.

Daphne claims 'pure spin'

Sources who were at Monday’s meeting claimed that Mr Portelli outraged members when he began blaming several external factors, including the Times of Malta and murdered journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, for the party’s problems.

His reference to the late journalist incensed many people in the room, sources said. 

On Tuesday, Mr Portelli dismissed those claims as pure “spin”, saying he never attacked Ms Caruana Galizia but wanted to "defend" her during Monday’s executive committee meeting.

"I recalled that in June 2017 she had called to enquire about Dr Delia as she had never met him before. However, from then onwards a number of MPs started feeding her lies about him, which she reproduced in her blog," he told Times of Malta.

"The moment I mentioned Daphne during the executive council meeting, a small number of MPs started screaming their heads off and disrupted the meeting, which had to come to an end. This is unacceptable behaviour for a democratic party, let alone for one that once branded itself the ‘party of dialogue,’" he said.

His resignation comes as the PN convenes its parliamentary group on Tuesday night in what could possibly determine Dr Delia's fate.