Updated 12.33pm with Franco Debono comments below.

The Nationalist Party must begin insolvency procedures, according to the former head of its media arm.

In a tweet on Tuesday, Pierre Portelli said the PN must begin what is known as "forced administration".

Administration is a business process normally initiated when a company has critical cash flow problems and is meant to settle pending dues.

Portelli, who until 2019 headed the PN’s Media.Link which publishes the party’s media, was reacting to Sunday's speech by party leader Bernard Grech.

Grech told the party that tough decisions lay ahead for the PN, which is now €32 million in debt. The PN leader has also said that he believes the party must redouble its efforts to sell some of its clubs, to rack up cash.

In his tweet, Portelli said he had closely followed Grech’s first moves since the March general election, which he said tallied with issues he had himself recently raised in a Times of Malta opinion piece.

The former editorial director of The Malta Independent, Portelli is widely believed to be the man who had encouraged Adrian Delia to stand for the PN leadership contest. 

He was appointed head of Media.Link by the former leader, a role he relinquished in 2019, amid claims he used to regularly visit alleged murder conspirator Yorgen Fenech to pick up €20,000 payments for the party. He denies the claims. 

Franco Debono: Selling would be wrong, make creative use of all assets

In a reaction on social media, former Nationalist MP Franco Debono said he disagreed that the PN should sell its clubs, arguing that to do so would deny it a presence in towns and villages.

Some clubs had already been sold, and yet nothing had been solved, he said. And the PN would need its clubs in the future to draw in new members.

Rather than selling clubs, the PN needed to be creative and intelligently use the clubs, its TV and all other assets. But to do so the PN needed to become more attractive for talent, participation and donations.  

There was a single solution to solve everything – the party needed to attract more people, the former MP insisted. Debono was one of five people PN voters cited as a potential alternative leader to Grech in a survey published last week