Last month, the Nationalist Party’s executive council formally declared that it was abandoning the disciplinary action that it had unanimously decided to take against former leader Simon Busuttil with the aim of suspending him from the party.

A natural question that arises here is why the executive council decided to institute disciplinary action against Busuttil in the first place. The answer can be traced back to the morning of Sunday, July 22, 2018, when former attorney general Peter Grech published 49 of the 1,500 pages making up the findings of the Egrant report.

Within minutes from the publishing of a mere three per cent of the report, former prime minister Joseph Muscat was already addressing a press conference.

Muscat demonstrated his renowned mastery in the art of deception as he brushed tears from his eyes and slyly accused Busuttil of complicity in a calumny against him and his wife. He claimed that Busuttil had involved himself in a coordinated plot to link them to Panama offshore company Egrant Inc.

Muscat said the Egrant story was “the biggest lie in Maltese political history” and it was the reason why he had decided to call an election a year ahead of time. However, it was Muscat himself who had lied, according to a declaration made by his close ally, Keith Schembri who testified that the decision was made before the story was published. 

Muscat’s goal was that of shaming, criticising, humiliating, mocking, ridiculing and threatening his long-time political adversary, Busuttil, who had fought tooth and nail against the widely spread corruption at the time he was prime minister.

Muscat stressed that the Egrant inquiry did not find evidence that the company belonged to him or his wife but he craftily avoided mentioning that the inquiry report was inconclusive, leaving a number of relevant questions unanswered including who the actual beneficial owner of Egrant was.

Muscat said he was proud to be Malta’s prime minister while Busuttil will go down as the greatest political liar in our country’s history. In reality, things turned out to be the other way around. Muscat was ousted from office in shame after months of public protests over his handling of the investigations into the assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia. On the other hand, Busuttil was appointed secretary general of the European People’s Party.

During his press conference, Muscat appealed to Adrian Delia, who was PN leader at the time, to immediately remove Busuttil as spokesperson for good governance and, if he did not resign from parliament on his own initiative, to request him to do so.

After just a few hours, Delia addressed a press conference during which he announced that he would be following Muscat’s advice, giving rise to suspicion of collusion between the two political leaders.

Kristy Debono, who, at the time, was the PN general council president, lost no time to declare her support for Delia’s decision over Busuttil’s suspension.

After Busuttil rejected Delia’s call to suspend himself from the PN parliamentary group, the latter summoned the party’s executive to approve a motion calling upon Busuttil to step down.

Quite unbelievably, the executive council argued that Busuttil’s suspension was necessary in the best interests of good governance and to allow the party to fight its battles against corruption in a more effective way.

Admirably, veteran party MP Mario de Marco stood up and showed his disagreement with Delia’s position by posting #NotInMyName #StrongerTogether on his twitter account. He was followed by a number of other Nationalist MPs.

Bernard Grech is establishing himself as the new PN leader by facing his challenges with courage and determination- Denis Tanti

In contrast, party MP Hermann Schiavone posted #inmyname on his twitter account.

Within just eight days, Delia revoked his decision in the wake of a revolt by the party’s parliamentary group and fears of a party split. The executive once again followed suit, raising serious doubts about its ability to act impartially and independently.

Last September, in the midst of his election campaign to retain his position as party leader, Delia admitted that he was wrong to have pushed for Busuttil to suspend himself from the party’s parliamentary group.

After the vast majority of the party’s MPs declared they no longer had confidence in Delia as party leader, pressure is known to have been mounted on the party’s executive to expel them from the party. Delia even publicly declared that he would never trust some of his MPs. However, by this time, Delia had lost the support of the executive.

Although Delia has since been ousted as leader, he continues to be an albatross around the PN’s neck and he regularly lends himself to manipulation by Labour through comments he gives to ONE journalists.

The revelations of Delia’s meeting with Caruana Galizia’s murder suspect Yorgen Fenech at his farmhouse and his inability to explain why Debono and Schiavone had approached Fenech at a time when he was PN leader put his integrity into serious doubt.

Bernard Grech is establishing himself as the new PN leader by facing his colossal challenges with great courage and determination.

He is demonstrating leadership, vigour and assiduousness, which are reflected in a rise in popularity of both himself and the party that he leads.

The support that Delia still enjoys within the party should not discourage Grech from taking the required action to safeguard the party’s interests, even if this is not taken well by certain individuals.

Grech should only give praise where due. His praise for Pierre Portelli for resigning from the party was way out of line after he unfairly vilified the party’s youth movement, the MŻPN, MEP David Casa, MP Chris Said and members of Occupy Justice through stories that he surreptitiously leaked and that were eventually published with prominence in l-Orizzont.

Grech should not be afraid to perform the necessary surgery, however extensive it may be, to prevent cancer from spreading and weakening the whole party.

Only in this way can the party regain its strength and become a true alternative government that can offer a real challenge to the present scandal-ridden Labour administration in time for the next election.

Denis Tanti is a former assistant director at the health ministry.