We’re all ‘friends’ with Adrian Delia, now…

If you’re anything like me (and I hope, for your sake, that you’re not)… your entire life will have unfolded against the backdrop of its own, imaginary sound-track.

It’s a little like having your own personal, randomized Spotify play-list, set on permanent repeat in the background… but with a few small differences.

One is that the random ‘music’ that plays in your head will be completely inaudible to everyone else around you… until, that is, you momentarily lose contact with your immediate surroundings; and suddenly belt out an unexpected, rousing chorus of…

… oh, I don’t know: the last time it happened to me, it was Jim Diamond’s ‘I Should Have Known Better’. Specifically, the part that goes: “But I thought you’d understa-a-a-and…! WILL YOU FOR-GIVE… ME? (Aye-aye-aye! Aye-aye-aye-AYE-aye-aye! No-Alpitu-ur…!”)

Or something like that, anyway. Meanwhile, it was roughly halfway through those impassioned  ‘Aye-aye-aye-aye-ayes!’, that I heard a polite little ‘cough’ in the background… only to realise that the person I happened to be calling, at the time (to fix an appointment for a MaltaToday interview, please note) had already answered the phone…

There, see what I mean? ‘Being like me’ can land you in some rather awkward situations, from time to time. After all: how do you explain to the PRO of one of Malta’s regulatory authorities, that the prospect of ‘requesting an interview with its CEO’ would cause me to spontaneously burst into song (and a gushing, incurably romantic, 1980s LOVE-SONG, at that)?

Which brings me to a second difference between ‘real’ and ‘imaginary’ music. Unlike any randomised playlist – which merely reshuffles the musical contents of your hard-drive - there is often a good reason for your mind to ‘choose’ which particular track to start playing for you, at any given moment.

Sometimes – and I suspect the Jim Diamond example was a case in point – the track itself would have been ‘triggered’ by an audible sound: like, for instance, the hooting of a car-horn; or the ring-tone of a mobile phone, which happens to be in the same key (and yes: I know I’m trying desperately to come up with plausible excuses, here… but what the heck, wouldn’t you?)

On other occasions, however, the ‘choice’ is literally dictated by the circumstances currently unfolding before your eyes. For instance: roughly halfway through the video of last Monday’s protest in Valletta – when Adrian Delia emerged triumphantly from Parliament; and all the previous ‘boos’ and ‘jeers’ suddenly transformed into a rapturous tumult of applause – my mental DJ dug deep into my memory banks, to throw out a classic TV theme-song from the 1990s.

I’m pretty sure you’re all familiar with it, too: so let’s sing it all together, shall we? [Note: some of the chord-changes are a little tricky, so I’ve marked them out in square brackets]

Ready? A-one, and a-two, and a-…

“[A] So no one told you life was gonna be this [G] WA-A-AY!

[A] Your job’s a joke, you’re broke, your love life’s D.O. [C#m ] A-A-A-AY!                                                    

[G] It’s like you’re [Bm] always stuck in [A] second gear…

[G] When it hasn’t been your [D] day, your week, your month, [E] or even your year…

BUT…”

Yes indeed, folks! ‘FRIENDS’! Because that’s what everyone suddenly wants to be with Adrian Delia, right now. And by ‘everyone’, I don’t mean just the crowd which applauded outside Parliament on Monday (and which, to be fair, probably included the same people who had also supported Adrian Delia through thick-and-thin… as opposed to ‘just today’…)

No, I mean absolutely everyone: Jennifer Aniston, Lisa Kudrow, Matt Perry, David Schwimmer, Courtney Cox… EVERYONE!

But if those names are too ‘improbable’ for you: then how about Jason Azzopardi, Beppe Fenech Adami, and – most incredible of all – Karol Aquilina (who even made a solemn declaration of his eternal ‘friendship’ with Delia, during the Parliamentary debate itself?)

That’s right: at least three of the celebrated ‘Blue Heroes’ who had (until just two short years ago) worked so tirelessly to engineer Adrian Delia’s undignified removal from the Nationalist Party leadership – in some cases (Aquilina and Azzopardi, in particular), even to the extent of openly accusing him of ‘fraud’ and ‘criminality’ - are all now eagerly climbing onto Delia’s glorious-and-triumphant bandwagon, themselves…

… but only now, of course: only after Delia has already succeeded in achieving what the entire Opposition had so far failed to ever accomplish (under, it must be said, the leadership chosen to replace him): i.e., the rescission of the ‘Vitals’ contract; and with it, the restitution of three stolen hospitals to their rightful owners, the people of Malta and Gozo.

Hmm. You know what? If I wasn’t such an incurable romantic, at heart – you know: the type who sings gushing 1980s love-songs to himself, when he thinks no one’s listening – I would suspect that those ‘Blue Heroes’ (especially, Karol Aquilina) were being somewhat slightly less than 100% honest, with all those declarations of ‘undying friendship’.

After all, it is a little hard (even between the best of buddies) to reconcile all those statements made over the last couple of days… with all the things the same ‘Blue Heroes’ used to regularly say about Adrian Delia, until only quite recently.

This, for instance, is lifted from a ‘Guest Post’ (authored by a certain Joe Azzopardi) that appeared on Manuel Delia’s blog in July 2020: when Adrian Delia was still staving off an open Parliamentary Group revolt. I think you’ll find that – beyond the obvious bias – it actually gives a reasonably accurate account, of Delia’s entire political career.

“In 2017, Adrian Delia came out of the blue to contest the leadership of the Nationalist Party. He was a good lawyer with corporate clients and a former president of a football club. Nobody knew him. His campaign was aggressive and many thought that he could be the answer to the PN’s woes.

“Then Daphne Caruana Galizia wrote a blog about his connection with shady deals in Soho prostitution. She alleged that Delia had had an offshore bank account in Jersey which received payment on behalf of his client for ‘rent’ of a property in London. This property had been used as a brothel, and the ‘rental’ income was said to be proceeds from prostitution […]

“[…] In October 2017, Daphne Caruana Galizia was assassinated and Adrian Delia immediately stopped all libel cases against the journalist. Very soon after his election as PN leader Delia, in December 2017, was again in the news about family problems. He was also accused of domestic violence. […]

“[In 2020] The Times published a Whatsapp chat between Yorgen Fenech, the man accused of being the mastermind behind the killing of Daphne Caruana Galizia, and Adrian Delia. Delia did not come clean about his relationship with the murder suspect. Instead he went to the police to try to force a local newspaper and journalist to expose their sources. Unheard of in a democratic country.

“[…] Nationalist MPs lost faith in him. Finally, last week, 17 MPs declared publicly that they had lost confidence in the Leader of the Opposition and confirmed this to the president […] Adrian Delia is not taking Malta’s future seriously… ”

There was, of course, a lot more to that blog-post – I merely isolated the most egregious, of the many accusations that have been publicly levelled at Adrian Delia over the years – but already, you can see that it actually follows the lyrics of that ‘Friends’ theme-song, rather closely.

‘Your job’s a joke’, for instance… how many times was Adrian Delia told exactly that, to his face (by the same ‘Blue Heroes’, no less)?  Or to be more accurate still: that he himself was a ‘joke’, when occupying the role of PN leader?

“You’re broke; your love-life’s D.O.A. [Dead-On-Arrival]…’ It’s all right there, implicit in the above quotes: in the tumultuous three years between 2017 (when Delia was elected PN leader) and 2020 (when he was unceremoniously booted out)… Delia himself went from being the ‘promising lawyer-candidate’, described in Paragraph One; all the way down to the ‘corrupt, possibly criminal’ wreck of a human being – driven to destitution, by ‘financial’ and ‘family’ problems -  we see by the end of the article.

And while not all those misfortunes may have been deliberately inflicted upon him, by those 17 Nationalist ‘rebel MPs’ in person… most of them (especially, the Soho connection; and the Yorgen Fenech Whatsapp chats) were lovingly repeated – and even embellished - by the same ‘Blue Heroes’ who now count themselves among Delia’s ‘friends’.

… with Karol Aquilina, in particular, even adding a few other allegations of his own (like that time, just before the 2017 PN leadership election, when he hinted that an Adrian Delia victory would result in the ‘Nationalist party being taken over by Freemasons’…)

Now: I don’t know about you, but… that’s not exactly the sort of behaviour I would realistically expect, from anyone who called themselves my ‘friend’. But then again…

a) I’m not Adrian Delia;

b) I AM an ‘incurable romantic’, at the end of the day; so…

c) Who knows? Maybe Karol Aquilina, and the rest of those Blue Heroes, really HAVE changed their own personal opinion about Adrian Delia, over the past couple of days…

And now, they are merely trying to reassure their newfound ‘bestbuddy’, that…(All together now, once more!)

‘[A] I’LL BE [D] THERE FOR [E] YOU! (Like I Never Was Before!…)

‘I’LL BE THERE FOR YOU! (And I Won’t Backstab, No More!…)

‘I’LL BE THERE FOR YOU! (Just Be There For Me, [G] Too!…)

[Repeat to fade]