A leadership debate, or a civil war?

On Monday, the Nationalist Party’s Administrative Council decided to appoint a Consultative Committee on Ethics and Decent Behaviour to investigate claims being made against Adrian Delia: one of the four contenders in the ongoing PN leadership race.

Delia stands accused by blogger Daphne Caruana Galizia of using a bank account in Jersey, in his name, to launder money generated by others through prostitution in London and Soho. He has denied those claims and insists that the account was a client account.

These are serious accusations which would deserve to be scrutinised in any political context. It remains debatable, however, whether the decision by the PN council was the ideal way to go about the issue.

Already, the situation can be seen to have been mishandled by the party structures. The meeting itself was held at the request of Charlot Cassar, creating the impression that it was motivated by infighting between cliques supporting different candidates. At first, Karol Aquilina – president of the same Administrative Council – insisted repeatedly that Monday’s meeting would not discuss Delia’s case, but only whether the PN should adopt a plan of action in view of the allegations and the situation in general.

Yet the outcome of that meeting was a decision to appoint an ad hoc committee specifically to investigate the claims against Delia: suggesting that the motive was indeed to ‘discuss Delia’s case’. Moreover, it will be headed by Louis Galea: a respectable choice in itself, no doubt, but one which is still clearly associated with the Nationalist Party old guard. It can therefore be construed as a case of the party establishment, intervening in the democratic process that intends to replace the current party establishment.

Questions have meanwhile been raised about the legitimacy of the investigation. This leadership election is being held in two stages: this Saturday, the councillors (around 1,500) will vote to select the top two candidates, who will proceed to a final poll on September 17. But around 120 councillors have already voted, citing unavailability to vote this Saturday. Many are arguing that the party should not even have convened the Administrative Council at all, since the election was already underway.

This also sets automatic limits on the council’s options. Delia cannot be removed as a candidate, when some councillors may have already voted for him. It would invalidate the entire election.

In the event that the election is called off, it would certainly be interpreted (by Delia’s supporters) as an attempt to block his candidature by other means.

This can only lend weight to claims – made by another candidate, Frank Portelli – that the election has been ‘rigged’.

But these are mere technicalities, compared to the much more serious underlying problem. By deciding to investigate Delia’s candidature, the Administrative Council only added fuel to the perception that the Nationalist Party – as Delia claimed on Monday – has been hijacked by external forces that now set the party’s agenda. It is indeed difficult to dismiss that perception, in view of Monday’s decision.

All this has generated dangerous levels of discontent within the PN. It would not be an exaggeration to describe the current situation as one of all-out civil war.

Caruana Galizia has for some time been incessantly targeting Delia on her blog. Initially, such ‘attacks’ were limited to revelations about his business interests, and therefore legitimate. Now, she is also targeting the people who support him in his campaign: describing Delia’s supporters, who gathered at the PN HQ yesterday, as “a mob”.

If so, it was a ‘mob’ which has always traditionally voted PN in the past, and which – however misguided or ill-advised – is still clearly motivated by the good of the Nationalist Party they always supported. In fact, it is hard to remember such displays of loyalty and enthusiastic fervour for the PN... without going back all the way to the 1980s.

On another level, it is also reminiscent of a time when politics was far more hot-headed and irascible than it is today. Whatever one makes of Delia’s candidacy, he has clearly fired up a section of that party’s grassroots, and given them something to cheer about. By the same token, he has also (inevitably, under the circumstances) given them something to lose their temper about, with possibly dangerous consequences.

It is tragic that the ‘something’ in question would be a declaration of war by Nationalists against Nationalists.

Lastly, the decision raises questions about the Nationalist Party’s internal vetting process, and the electoral commission that is supposed to have vetted all candidates when they submitted their nomination for the leadership election. Why was proper due diligence not carried out then? It could have spared the party much, if not all, of its present problems.

It is perhaps too late to make this judgement now, but perhaps calls for Simon Busuttil to step down immediately after the election, and install an interim leader for six to 12 months while the leadership election process played out, were right after all. Maybe the party would have been better off if it made an immediate, clean break with the past, and allowed the healing and regeneration process to take place uninterrupted.