Adrian Delia’s brother Anthony, a councillor in St Paul’s Bay, has quit the Nationalist Party.
He will continue to sit on the council as an independent in protest over the way he said the former leader was “eliminated” by certain groups within the party.
“I do not feel that this is my party any longer. We had a party which did all it could to eliminate its leader.
“What we had last Saturday was not an election but an elimination and I do not feel comfortable with this, so I decided to quit,” Delia told Times of Malta when contacted.
Delia adds his name to a number of other former party members who have left in protest over the unfair way they feel the former leader was treated.
Reacting to those who accused him of betraying the party, Delia said: “I am not a traitor. The traitors are those who wanted to see my brother out of the leadership seat at all costs. Those who worked very hard to destabilise the party and make Adrian look like a fool. Those are the party’s traitors and the problem is that they’re still there.”
Asked whether he was referring to MPs like Jason Azzopardi, Karol Aquilina, and Therese Comodini Cachia , Delia said that apart from those there were others, including PN stalwart Louis Galea and Ivan Bartolo, who gave up his parliamentary seat for the new leader, Bernard Grech, to become an MP.
“I started becoming involved in the party at the time of Eddie [Fenech Adami] when our mantra was Xogħol, Ġustizzja, Libertà (Work, justice, freedom) but where are these now in the party?
“The latter two do not exist. I gave my heart to the PN but will not continue with the people there are now. I am hurt, not only over the way my brother was treated but because this is not the party I’ve grown up in,” he said.
Delia said anyone could have won the leadership election against his brother because he had “everyone against him”.
“I think even Harry Potter would have won it. How can you play a game when you’re the only one trying to score into your opponent’s goal post while the rest of your team are trying to shoot into their own? That’s what Adrian had to face for three years. He wanted to change things inside the party and certain people were not pleased with where it was going,” he said.
He said he would not cross over to the Labour Party – this would be “taking it a step too far” – but pledged to continue working on the council for all Nationalists and Labourites “because there should be no division in politics”.
Fellow St Paul’s Bay councillor Anne Fenech, who spent some time as the locality’s mayor, also quit the party, saying she did not agree with certain decisions it had taken, including last week’s leadership election that dethroned the former leader.
“The party is not the same anymore. I do not recognise my party any longer. I will continue serving the people who elected me from an independent seat,” she said when contacted.
Meanwhile, three members of the Żabbar PN committee also resigned from the party yesterday.