As Malta wallows in scandals and corruption, leadership developments within the Nationalist Party provide a ray of hope for a start to the process of healing a seriously handicapped opposition. The struggle to achieve an effective, clean and credible PN leadership is gaining momentum.
Conscientious MPs within the PN party are showing signs of waking up from a state of trance and are reacting to the dire situation. This time round, this group of valid MPs appears determined to push the reform struggle to a successful conclusion.
The critical first task to identify a valid, capable and honest possible leader, to substitute Delia, has been accomplished. Therese Comodini Cachia is a breath of fresh air in a malodorous atmosphere created by this Labour administration, an administration very weakly challenged by a more than inadequate Adrian Delia.
A decision by the President of Malta to allow Delia to stay on as opposition leader in spite of an officially declared loss of trust in him by a majority of opposition MPs is another challenge that this PN redeeming process has to face.
A more than legitimate, and constitutionally correct request, by a majority of opposition MPs to have Comodini Cachia nominated as opposition leader has been turned down; a very sad ruling by the President in a moment of great distress for Malta.
The moment is critical, people must stand up to be counted, the stakes are high, the journey long and perilous
A decision taken by PN tesserati who do not feature in the Constitution, has been made to prevail on a clear right to choose a leader exercised by opposition MPs. True representatives of the people (19 MPs x 4,000 votes = 72,000 electors), seem to carry less weight than (7,100, out of 25,000) PN tesserati.
Many people are now aware and worried how the denial of opposition leadership to Comodini Cachia and the continued confirmation of same to Delia has not helped the PN’s desperate struggle to equip itself to decently confront the Labour menace.
Nevertheless, it does look like there is now more resolve among a majority of PN MPs to serve Malta and rid the island of the Delia millstone round the neck of the opposition.
It is encouraging to finally see people like Comodini Cachia, and there are others, prepared to take a step forward and propose themselves as decent and capable alternates to Delia. The moment is critical, people must stand up to be counted, the stakes are high, the journey long and perilous but it must start and continue.
The ultimate objective is not just the reform and renewal of the PN in opposition but also the rallying of a majority of Labour supporters to contrast the total takeover of their party by an unscrupulous, corrupt self-serving leadership.
A leadership that in its corrupt pursuits has despicably almost mortally wounded Malta’s essential institutions (police, FIAU, AG’s Office, Planning Authority, etc), leaving a debilitated state unable to decently function internally and internationally.
Civil Society, Repubblika, Occupy Justice and others are courageously doing their part, but they can only do so much to induce the PN and the PL to behave.