If Adrian Delia is reconfirmed leader of the Nationalist Party during the party’s General Council on Saturday, then it will be with the votes of many councillors who do not believe that he is the right leader.
They will vote for him knowing that the next general election will, at best, confirm the PN’s dismal local council results in May. But they will also be convinced that their vote is the best choice in the current circumstances.
In choices like these, voters are guided by what they consider practical. In 2003, after losing a second general election in a row, and looking like he could never persuade a majority of voters to trust him again, Labour leader Alfred Sant faced a leadership challenge. He pulled through with 68 per cent.
It didn’t mean, of course, that two-thirds of the Labour delegates actually supported him, just as the 24 per cent who voted for the main challenger, Anġlu Farrugia, weren’t all crazy enough to think Farrugia would make a better leader.
Many of the 68 per cent simply thought Sant was the best option on the ballot paper. And many of the 24 per cent were so sure Farrugia wouldn’t win that they felt they could safely vote for him as a protest against Sant. Sant limped on and lost again in 2008, despite facing a PN weakened by long years of government and accumulated voter resentment.
On Saturday, PN councillors will be making similar calculations about their own Alfred Sant. (The analogy is strictly in terms of electability. Otherwise it’s unfair to Sant and cruel to Delia.)
The first thing to understand about the councillors as a group is that they are not to be divided simply into pro- and anti- Delia voters. The people who fall in neither category are not woolly undecideds.
The PN has been divided since at least 2017 but many councillors’ voting behaviour has straddled the divide. I know councillors who, in 2017, voted for Alex Perici Calascione in the first round of the leadership election and then, as party members, favoured Delia in the run-off.
Perici Calascione was the candidate known to be favoured by the outgoing leader, Simon Busuttil, whose opposition to the very candidacy of Delia was public knowledge. But there is no contradiction in the same persons favouring first one camp and then the other.
Practical choices are always made with an eye on the real alternatives. As the options change, so do preferences.
Councillors also try to guess consequences. Devastated by a massive electoral defeat despite the Panama scandal, some councillors decided that the unanswered questions about Delia’s financial dealings mattered less to voters and hence discounted them.
Such councillors weren’t cynical about ethics but one of the bitter lessons of 2017 was to make them cynical about fellow voters. Faced with leadership candidates whom they just couldn’t see winning in 2022, they decided to roll the dice on the candidate who was an unknown quantity.
If you want a caretaker leader, then get a real caretaker. Right now, it looks like the wisest option
Now, two years later, the circumstances are pushing practical reasoning in a different manner. The same councillors who took a gamble in 2017 are risk-averse today.
Faced with three choices – confirming the leader, choosing a new one, or appointing a caretaker – some councillors are framing the vote in terms of a fourth choice: to reconfirm Delia because they see him as the best caretaker until the inevitable massive general election defeat.
Most councillors are grounded enough to know that a uniquely distrusted leader, as far as polls go, cannot pull off a comeback that more popular leaders never managed.
However, what alternative leader is there to see? If there is one, why damage a promising leader by sending him into the jaws of defeat in 2022?
Better to wait two years, the reasoning goes. It would give Delia a fair chance to prove himself without risking anything. And if Louis Galea manages to rebuild the party, the bleeding can be stopped.
You don’t have to agree with this line of thinking to see why it could seem realistic and compelling. It reassures both mind and heart. It addresses fears of chaos that could follow if the General Council expresses no confidence in its leader. It triangulates the concerns of giving Delia a fair chance, of getting a caretaker and improving the party’s future electoral chances.
Alas, the thinking depends on assuming that Delia acts in good faith and wants to empower the party. But the evidence for that is flimsy.
Take the way he has treated the motion convening the General Council. Throughout, he has referred to it as a “petition” (and apparently bamboozled Ivan Bartolo and others who brought forward the motion into talking of it that way).
A petition is not a motion. A petition is a request for something to which you do not have a right. A motion, on the contrary, is based on a right conferred by the statute. The confidence motion, once it had 150 councillors’ signatures, informed the party administration that the General Council had been called. It informed; it did not request or petition.
But Delia has consistently called it a petition, equating it with a real petition signed by party members (who have no statutory right to convene the General Council). He substituted a meeting called by others by one called by himself, awarding himself thus the right to make significant changes to the wording of the motion to be discussed.
That’s not behaviour that exudes good faith. It smacks of contempt for party democracy. It does not bode well for the empowerment of party structures, if he feels they could become too autonomous of his will. Such an attitude will stop the reforms pursued by Galea from reaching their full potential.
For example, if Galea succeeds, then we should expect new leadership voices to begin to be heard within the party. That’s the kind of dialogue that renewal brings. But can such dialogue truly flourish in an environment where different voices are often equated with dissent?
That’s the inherent problem with trying to square the circle. A caretaker leader will define his legacy by his success in nurturing several potential successors. A besieged leader striving to assert himself has a different attitude. So far Delia has been focussed on squelching any thought of successors.
Is it plausible that over the next two years he will prepare the ground for a succession? Or is it at least as likely that his tenure will serve to entrench the power of the shady characters occupying part of his orbit?
The councillors should obviously vote for what they believe, and if they believe Delia is the party’s best choice, then it’s their duty to vote for him. But they should not take refuge in wishful thinking.
If you want a caretaker leader, then get a real caretaker. Right now, it looks like the wisest option.