Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1268420
10 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 12 JULY 2020 OPINION Raphael Vassallo So much for the 'post-Delia plan'… JUST a few hours before the PN parliamentary group voted against Adrian Delia last Tues- day, a nameless MP told this newspaper that "there was al- ready a post-Delia plan agreed upon" which "had the wide- spread support of a vast majority of the parliamentary group." And that, to the best of my knowledge, was the first indica- tion of any form of long-term planning at all by the PN's so- called rebel faction – or 'Blue Heroes', if you prefer the title they have so modestly chosen for themselves – in the three whole years they have been busy plot- ting Delia's political downfall. Up until that point, the only ap- parent driving force behind their efforts was just an undisguised desire for Adrian Delia to simply 'disappear': ideally, of his own accord – I have lost count of the number of resignation calls com- ing from Nationalist backbench- ers – but failing that… then by any means necessary, fair or foul. More significantly, there was never any attempt to offer an al- ternative vision for the future of the PN. From day one, the rebels have always acted as though 'get- ting rid of Adrian Delia' were the only objective that mattered – thus betraying an underlying (and shockingly naïve) assumption that all the party's current prob- lems would simply follow Delia out of the building, the moment he was forced to leave. There are, however, a few small snags with that approach. One very simple one is that the Na- tionalist Party's electability issues did not exactly start with Adrian Delia – quite the contrary, in fact: Delia actually won the last PN leadership race on a promise to rebuild that party, following two consecutive (and incrementally disastrous) electoral defeats in 2013 and 2017 respectively. And this forces us to confront an irony that most people seem to be missing in this debate. While we can all agree that Adrian De- lia himself has failed miserably to live up to that promise – and that, following recent revelations, he has absolutely zero chance of ever succeeding in future – the fact re- mains that the rebels now calling for his removal, were themselves the architects of the PN's current predicament to begin with. It's amazing how quickly every- one seems to have forgotten this: but two of those 17 rebels – Be- ppe Fenech Adami and Mario De Marco – were part of the PN leadership team (alongside Simon Busuttil) that had to resign en masse following the 2017 drub- bing. Others within the same camp – Jason Azzopardi, Claudio Grech, Karol Aquilina, etc. – were like- wise either part of the last PN ad- ministration (you know, the one that imploded so spectacularly in 2013); or, at minimum, occupied some position or other within the structures of the Nationalist Party before the (even more bruising) defeat of 2017. As for Chris Said – who led the first cavalry charge last Tuesday, before ceding command of the re- bel forces to Therese Commodini Cachia – he was none other than the main contender against Adri- an Delia in the last PN leadership race… and lost. In a nutshell, then, what we are really witnessing is a very far cry from the 'heroic struggle for the soul of the PN' (as it has so far been presented)… but rather, nothing more glamorous or ro- mantic than an umpteenth cor- porate takeover bid of the PN, by the same people who were actu- ally rejected by that party three years ago (not to mention by the electorate… twice). So exactly how these rebels can suddenly reinvent themselves as the only ones capable of 'saving' the PN – when they actually re- duced that party to the sorry state it is in today – is, I suppose, any- one's guess really. But… well, that's the whole point, isn't it? They're not even trying to do that, it seems: not even now, when the internal dis- sent has clearly passed the point of no return. No, their only interest is still just to oust Adrian Delia, come Hell or high water… with everything else (including the entire future of a party that would, by then, be eviscerated anyway) relegated to the status of an afterthought. This, by the way, emerges even from the wording of that plan I mentioned in the first paragraph. It's a 'post-Delia plan', remem- ber? That means it can only be implemented once Delia himself has gone… but oh look: Delia is still there, three days after losing a vote of confidence pushed for- ward by his own MPs. OK, admittedly this might change at any moment between now (Friday) and Sunday. But at the time of writing, there is still no guarantee that this umpteenth mutiny will be any more success- ful than any of the same rebels' previous attempts. On the contrary: there is every reason to expect that it will not succeed… or at least, not in any way that can possibly lead to any form of meaningful renewal of the Nationalist Party. For let's face it: this 'post-De- lia plan' seems to be rooted the same ill-conceived strategy that previously gave us the 'Barra, Bar- ra!' motif in 2017: implying that the real concern was more with destroying one's political oppo- nents, than with replacing them as a fully-functional government, complete with its own agenda, and its own ideas. Do I need to go on? Apart from those two electoral defeats I al- ready mentioned, the same 'Barra, Barra!' approach also manifestly failed to prevent the election of Adrian Delia as PN leader in the first place (indeed, it arguably sealed his victory, against the run of play). How, then, can it possibly be ex- pected to work today? And that's before we get to the nitty-gritty of all the Consti- tutional loopholes and pitfalls. Here, I shall have to admit that I am no expert in Constitution- al matters… but then again, not even Malta's foremost legal brains seem to be in agreement on what, exactly, the Constitution actually decrees for an unprecedented sit- uation such as this. By now, you will all be aware that there are different interpretations of the all-important Article 90: which simultaneously holds that: "(a) if there is one opposition par- ty whose numerical strength in the House of Representatives is greater than the strength of any other opposition party, [the Pres- ident shall appoint] the member of the House of Representatives who is the Leader of that party"; and "(b) [the President shall ap- What we are really witnessing is a very far cry from the 'heroic struggle for the soul of the PN'