Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1075590
14 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 27 JANUARY 2019 NEWS ANALYSIS PN leader Adrian Delia's strategy of confronting his internal enemies has paid off. His adversaries banked on him suc- cumbing to the pressure of leaked vid- eos and recordings from his personal life, so that he could leave of his own free will. But Delia refused to budge, galvanising his internal support by go- ing on the warpath and challenging his adversaries to come out in the open to confront him. They lacked the num- bers and will to do so, and Delia won. So Delia has survived and could probably now dictate the terms of a forthcoming internal truce. Yet his en- emies can play a waiting game, only to emerge again with their daggers drawn out against him after May's European elections. This latest episode has given Delia one advantage. Come next May he can blame the PN's defeat on those who did not rally behind him. But he still needs to rally the party around him to avoid being humiliated at the polls. For while the party will most certainly lose these elections by a considerable margin, the scale of defeat will have a determining factor weighing on his fu- ture as PN leader. The fact that expec- tations are so low may well turn out to be Delia's greatest advantage. With the PN gaining very little from Labour and at risk of losing votes to third parties, the party simply cannot afford to lose more from its core 2017 voters. That explains why last Sunday, Delia reached out to that segment of Nationalist Party voters who intend to abstain in next May's elections to spite their leader and force the party to re- place him. Delia seems to have lost any hope that he can win these voters over to his side. Instead he panders to their greater antipathy for Joseph Muscat and Konrad Mizzi. "If you think this government is a corrupt government and you don't vote in the election, you are voting for Joseph Muscat," Delia said. "If you are thinking that it is bet- ter to remain home, you will be giving your consent to [Tourism Minister] Konrad Mizzi." The problem for Delia is that in do- ing so he is confirming that the only thing which keeps the various factions together, is antipathy towards Labour and not an inspiring vision of a better future. And that makes the party look reactive and inward-looking. Catch-22 for anti-Delias On the other hand the question fac- ing his internal enemies is: Should they contribute to Delia's demise by making sure that their own party loses heavily in the next elections? The risk of causing further embarrassments for Delia is that it will turn them into ideal scapegoats after the defeat. Yet they also know that if Delia does bet- ter than expected, he will be strength- ened. They have also managed to turn Delia into a victim of byzantine plots, thus making him a more likeable fig- ure. Moreover by sabotaging Delia, the anti-Delia faction risks sacrificing some of their own like David Casa who will be also be contesting MEP elec- tions. Candidates like Casa cannot af- ford to alienate the party's leadership which secures access to the party ma- chinery and media. This explains why Casa was present in last Sunday's ac- tivity. If party divisions are reflected in ab- stentions or in a large number of non- transferable votes – where each fac- tion votes for its own candidates – the party may even put its second seat at risk, even if this prospect remains re- mote. The uneasy truce This makes the prospect of an uneasy truce between now and the end of May very likely. While in the next weeks, Delia is bound to sound more concil- iatory, his henchmen will probably be more bellicose. A taste of this was given by PN me- dia chief Pierre Portelli's revelation in court that blogger Manuel Delia was Adrian Delia's 'ghostwriter' before he was elected PN leader. While this was clearly meant to discredit the anti-De- lia blogger who has been depicted as a mercenary, it also showed how fluid political alliances are in Malta. For the brief collaboration between Adrian Delia's campaign team and the former Austin Gatt aide turned civil society activist and blogger, further blurs the distinction between the party's old guard and the new guard. On again, off again But by taking the role of conciliator Delia risks committing the same mis- take he has already committed in the past, periodically shifting from belli- cose confrontation with the old guard to periods of reconciliation and inclu- sion. Delia, who only last year had ap- pointed Busuttil as his spokesperson for good governance, had already over-reached himself when he tried to kick Busuttil out from his parliamen- tary group after the publication of the Egrant inquiry's conclusion, only to retract in the face of internal pressure. Delia's latest conciliatory messages which contrast with his recent belli- cose messages may further disorient opponents and supporters alike. On Sunday Delia even adopted a con- ciliatory tone towards Occupy Justice, which had been the target of the par- ty's media in the past weeks, insisting in his speech that it was not true that the PN intended to attack the pressure group. Beyond the Daphne crowd Yet there is one major assumption Delia is making which may backfire Adrian Delia has survived the latest attempt to depose him, but the spectre of high levels of abstention among PN voters for the MEP 'midterms' means a truce with his antagonists could be likely. Can he dictate the terms? JAMES DEBONO looks into the issue Adrian Delia: The truce after the victory Who are Adrian Delia's internal adversaries? Nobody has lent his face to the recent rebellion against Delia. The MPs who spoke against Delia to the media have done so anonymously. The only MP to come close to express reservations in public was Jason Azzopardi who used football analogies to criticise Labour exponents who were defending