Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1275149
3 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 2 AUGUST 2020 NEWS +3 DAYS verification is concluded, the Candidates to send to the Administrative Council Commission a detailed report including as to whether the names submitted verification criteria laid down in the Statute +3 DAYS The Electoral Commission has 3 days to publoish a notice for nomination of candidates who pass the verification process +5 DAYS Nominations remain open for 5 days + FIRST WEEKEND AFTER 14 DAYS If more than 2 candidates contest the leadership election, the Electoral Commission must convene the General Council on the first weekend two weeks after nominations close, to vote from among all the candidates nominated + FIRST WEEKEND AFTER 14 DAYS The Electoral Commission must call party members to a General Convention on the first weekend two weeks after either nominations close (if only 2 candidates contest the election)or after the election in the General Council, to elect the party leader from among the 2 candidates (or the 2 candidates with the highest votes in the General Council election) Open war between Azzopardi and Delia MATTHEW AGIUS ADRIAN Delia's failure to deny allegations that he had met Tu- mas magnate Yorgen Fenech over a bid to scupper MEP David Ca- sa's re-election chances showed that they were true, according to a counter-protest filed by National- ist MP Jason Azzopardi. Azzopardi filed the counter-pro- test in response to his party lead- er, Adrian Delia's, recent filing of a judicial protest against him. Delia had claimed that Azzopar- di was spreading "defamatory and false" rumours via SMS. One of the text messages presented as part of the court proceedings reads: "Of course it is! And you have no idea of the hundreds of other messages in the mobile of Fenech in 2019 relating to the payment to Delia of €50,000 and pledge of €100,000 or more if Casa was not elected. You have NO idea what I've been holding up inside me since Janu- ary. Know once and for all that the man is a pathological liar." Delia asked why Azzopardi did not go to the police with this in- formation in January, alleging that Azzopardi was doing all he could to sully Delia's name. Reacting in a Facebook post in which he called Delia "Yorgen Fenech's mate", Azzopardi had challenged Delia to resign if the evidence proved him wrong. Re- ferring to the PN leader as "Yor- gen Fenech's friend," Azzopardi said Delia had never outright de- nied having communicated with Fenech. This morning's counter-protest, signed by lawyers Stephen Thake and Kris Busietta, argues that the judicial protest was simply a smokescreen. Azzopardi said De- lia was "trying to hide the politi- cal effects of the choices he made behind an empty legalistic words." No judicial protest was going to change the forensically con- firmed fact that Delia had secret- ly communicated with Yorgen Fenech after Fenech's ownership of Dubai based kickback recipient company 17 Black became public knowledge. Delia had met Fenech for a meal after the revelations, Azzopardi states. "This at the same time that [Azzopardi] and a small number of PN MPs…were attacking with their speeches and court actions and beyond, at risk to their lives, the corruption car- ried out by the secret company 17 Black through its owner Yorgen Fenech." Delia's actions after the 9th No- vember 2018 – the date when Fenech's ownership of the com- pany was made public – weak- ened the criticism by and actions of Azzopardi, other MPs and civil society, which had all strongly at- tacked government corruption at great risk to their safety, Azzopar- di said. Azzopardi stated that he had nothing to take back from what he had written and said, "because what he wrote and said is the truth and confirmed by the same evidence, now preserved, which was extracted and analyzed by the competent authorities, which are not solely the Maltese authori- ties." He said it was interesting to see how Delia had chosen to file his judicial protest on the eve of a cru- cial and sensitive vote in the PN, when he had been in possession of the information for a long time. Delia did not care whether he dragged the entire party down with him, said Azzopardi, saying that he, on the other hand, was doing his best to stop this from happening and to "uncover the re- al truth before it is too late." Nowhere in his judicial protest had Delia denied the accusations, Azzopardi remarked. "Had he truly been innocent, Delia would have said that the allegations were not true, but he did not say this. Had he not been part of the con- spiracy to stop David Casa from being elected to the European Parliament in May 2019, Delia would have himself asked to testi- fy before the inquiring magistrate. Strangely he has not done this." of 67.8% of councillors, how- ever, since then that backing seems to have been reversed. With accusations that he had remained in contact with Tumas magnate Yorgen Fenech after he had been re- vealed to be the owner of the mysterious Dubai company 17 Black, a vehicle connected to the secret Panama com- panies opened by the former prime minister's chief of staff Keith Schembri, MPs mount- ed an internal rebellion against Delia. In July, the MPs voted in a confidence motion to remove Delia from Opposition lead- er, with 19 in favour against 11 after a heated five-hour meeting. The MPs then announced they were backing MP Ther- ese Comodini Cachia to become leader of the Op- position. But despite the ma- jority of MPs submitting to the President of the Republic that they no longer support- ed Delia to be their leader in the House of Representatives, George Vella insisted that he could not revoke Delia's ap- pointment unless MPs break off as a separate majority in opposition to the govern- ment in the House. Delia then threatened he would change the portfoli- os shadowed by the PN MPs who moved a vote of no-con- fidence against him. However, rebel MPs kept up the pressure in a meeting in the executive commit- tee, which groups a smaller number of MPs and repre- sentatives from party organs, and once again successfully passed a no-confidence mo- tion against Delia. Delia ignored both motions, insisting that he had been elected democratically by paid-up members and that only a general convention of members could elect a new leader. In a meeting inside the PN executive, a new motion was proposed to go for a leader- ship election, while Delia ar- gued for a confirmation vote, insisting that a leadership contest at this juncture was damaging to the PN. At the end, Delia agreed on a joint motion with rebel MPs to call for a vote in the Gen- eral Council, the PN's high- est decision-making organ to choose: whether to call on members in a convention to either confirm Delia as leader in a confidence vote, or else kick off a full-blown leader- ship election. The outcome of yesterday's vote is a sign of the deep split inside the PN: one which has pitted anti-Delia MPs loy- al to former leader Simon Busuttil's moralistic anti-cor- ruption drive, against Delia, whose baggage has never enabled him to win wider trust against his Labour op- ponents. In an impassioned speech on Friday, Delia told coun- cil members will be asked to vote between the "PN of the past and the PN of hope". "I tried uniting the party for the last three years, but we have to face the fact that the majority of the parliamentary group want to remove me," he said, insisting he would not be bowing down to in- timidation. "I faced a corrupt and crim- inal government. They lied about me and my family. But I will continue to fight for what I truly believe in – a re- vitalised PN," he said. Delia became PN leader in September 2017 in the first-ever leadership election determined by members. In a face-off with Gozitan MP Chris Said, Delia had carried the day with 52.7% of the vote. "This is a clear message, a third vote of its kind... this is a substantial majority in the General Council, the party's highest organ" - Chris Said MPs Chris Said (centre) and Karol Aquilina (right) address a press conference hailing yesterday's vote for a new leadership race