Sarah Carabott talks with two PN executive committee members about the leadership

‘A rulebook is a rulebook’

André Grech, president of the SMEs forum of the Nationalist Party:

I am pro Delia because I am pro party leader. I always believed that Adrian Delia should stay on as leader because I believe in the way the party structures work and also because last year he won a general council confidence vote.

That vote confirmed his mandate until the next general election – leaders are elected for one legislature in order to maintain stability.

A few have been trying to kick Delia out since the day Jean Pierre Debono gave him his parliamentary seat.

I cannot understand this as I have personally always seen him giving his all for the party and building bridges with the business community which the PN had been detached from in recent years.

Those who want Delia to go keep mentioning poor poll performance when in reality the PN has been seeing negative poll results since 2008. During the last legislature, we always discussed the way forward and which candidates we should approach to attract more voters. We never discussed a change in leadership.

Indeed, how can one argue that we should remove our party leader based on poll results?

Leaders should be elected and hold their post in accordance with the party statute. A rulebook is a rulebook.

‘He turned us against one other’

Nicky Azzopardi, vice president of the Moviment Żgħażagħ Partit Nazzjonalista:

I have made my position clear numerous times, including during Tuesday’s executive committee meeting when my name was brought up with that of others in an attempt to coerce us into silence.

There are many reasons Delia’s exit is called for and now inevitable.

However, the one which hurts the most for young people like us is not that he intentionally misled us about recent communication with Yorgen Fenech.

Nor is it his abysmal performance in the polls.

The gravest of them all is how he is the first PN leader to intentionally turn Nationalists against each other.

From the very beginning – from when he kicked off his leadership campaign – he used terminology force-fed by the Labour Party, saying how he wants to rid the PN of ‘the elitists’, ‘the establishment’ and the ‘klikka’.

He also used ‘us vs them’ rhetoric, inciting rivalry between party members in order to preserve his seat. His interest has always been himself, and nothing else.

This is such a pity and it will require so much soul searching and bridge building after his tenure in order to remedy the situation.