Jason Azzopardi has spoken out about the multiple snubs he received from party leader Bernard Grech in the run-up to the general election, culminating in a May 2021 request for him to quit politics for good.

The lawyer and former firebrand MP was, along with Evarist Bartolo, the highest-profile candidate to miss out on a parliamentary seat in the March election. 

He has since said that he was hung out to dry by Grech, who he lashed out at when he resigned from the party last May. 

Grech has since said that he considers the matter “closed”. But it appears Azzopardi still has some things to get off his chest.

Excerpts from the interview, in which Azzopardi spoke out about his issues with Grech.

Over the course of a 30-minute interview with academic Andrew Azzopardi on 103 Radio, the former MP rattled off a series of incidents which he said made it clear to him that Grech did not want him around.

Maybe a comeback - once Grech is gone

“I could see it coming,” he said of his electoral freeze-out. “It would have been a miracle if I had been elected.”

But Azzopardi also made it clear that he would be keen to make a political comeback – provided the PN is under different leadership.

“I still love politics,” he said. “But while Bernard Grech remains leader, and without a leader who inspires like Eddie [Fenech Adami], Lawrence [Gonzi], or Simon Busuttil, I cannot [return].”

Grech assumed the PN leadership in September 2020 and inherited a party fractured by infighting between his predecessor Adrian Delia and a group of MPs that Azzopardi formed a prominent part of.

In his victory speech, he said the PN was now “one team”. Judging by Azzopardi’s words, that was not quite true.

A series of PN snubs

Azzopardi said he sensed things taking an ugly turn for him in January 2021, when Grech reshuffled his shadow cabinet and took the Justice portfolio away from him.

He was first offered the Culture brief, he said, but was then handed the Employment porfolio after telling Grech that he knew nothing about the cultural sector.

“It’s absolutely his prerogative,” he said of the reshuffle, “but it gave me a fright.”

Two months later, Azzopardi says he received a clearer snub from the party leader.

George Degiorgio, who has admitted to murdering journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, threatened Azzopardi in open court.

“It was my birthday,” the former MP recalled. “My phone was ringing off the hook. Even Labour MPs were calling me to see if I was OK. But the Opposition leader never reached out. Not even a text.”

Weeks later, he heard then-minister Carmelo Abela accuse him, on TVM, of being “in bed with criminals.” PN representative Mark Anthony Sammut sat across from him and remained silent, he said.

Azzopardi said he later learnt that Sammut had been instructed by the PN to ‘not defend Jason Azzopardi’.

Grech continued to show his antipathy by not inviting him to events that were directly related to his portfolio, Azzopardi said, including events that he himself had organised for the party leader. 

A request to resign

By the middle of May 2021, and with the PN trailing Labour by almost 40,000 votes in the polls, the party sent a representative to Azzopardi’s home, to have a quiet word.

“He urged me to resign from politics, because doing so would win the party ’15,000 votes, just like that,’” Azzopardi told his radio host. “He’s lucky I didn’t chuck him off the balcony.”

All throughout that year, he had been kept away from PN party media, with a party journalist also instructed to cancel an interview with him.

Azzopardi, Grech and PN secretary general Michael Piccinino during the electoral campaign. Photo: FacebookAzzopardi, Grech and PN secretary general Michael Piccinino during the electoral campaign. Photo: Facebook

“There was a fatwa on me and three of my colleagues,” he said. Azzopardi is believed to have been referencing fellow MPs such as Karol Aquilina, Beppe Fenech Adami, Chris Said and Mario de Marco, who fell out of favour under Grech.

But it was only in October or November of that year that the penny truly dropped, Azzopardi said, when an unnamed friend of his recounted what the party leader had told him.

“Bernard Grech said: ‘Those who have been here a long time look down on me. The new ones will look up to me.’  And that’s when I understood.”  

A chorus of party discord

Azzopardi’s critique of Grech adds to the seeds of discord that have emerged into the open since the party’s record drubbing during the March general election.

In his final interview before passing away in October, former deputy leader Robert Arrigo said Grech’s PN had caused him “a pain greater than cancer” by sidelining him and dismissing him as a mere “fundraiser”.

And another former deputy leader, Beppe Fenech Adami, has said he believes Grech was wrong to freeze veteran MPs Mario de Marco, Chris Said and Carm Mifsud Bonnici out of his shadow cabinet.

Former St Julian's mayor Albert Buttigieg accused Grech's team of protecting "fat cats" at his expense. Buttigieg, who is now a PN MP, has since patched things up with the party. 

Grech has moved to stem criticism by arguing that the PN is the only party that can stand up to the ruling Labour government.

“When you weaken the PN, you are weaking the country,” he has said. “And this goes for both those working in the party and those outside of it who undermine it.”

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