Will Busuttil resign? PN leader says he awaits third seat judgement

Opposition leader Simon Busuttil today said the loss of the PN in the European elections, at 40.2% of the vote, was a “disappointing” one but the jury is still out on whether his leadership is in trouble.

Busuttil did not say whether he would resign, preferring to await the final outcome of the election and to see whether the PN will elect a third MEP – the target Busuttil set himself at the start of the election.

Busuttil said that the result clearly showed that the PN was still far off from regaining the trust of the electorate or being “the people’s natural party”.

Preliminary figures show that the Labour Party garnered 53% of the votes, while the PN managed 40.2% of the votes.

Stressing that the PN’s goal was to elect a third MEP seat, and not to offset the 36,000-vote discrepancy it suffered in 2013, Busuttil conceded that the PN had failed to make any “significant” inroads in the electorate.

Asked whether he will resign in the face of defeat – which is arguably Simon Busuttil’s first major test of his leadership – Busuttil said he would commit after the outcome of the sixth seat is announced.

But Busuttil said that it was important that the party leadership stay on to serve the PN rather than leading it further astray.

“The message to the PN is that the party must rebuild itself anew. The PN is still a work in progress, while few things went wrong for the Labour Party,” he said.

The PN leader, who in the run-up to the election focused his party’s efforts on lambasting the government’s performance, conceded that the majority was “satisfied with the government’s performance.”

Addressing a press conference at the PN headquarters, Busuttil insisted that the Nationalist Party would not be disheartened by its loss, arguing that it will accept the result. “We want to regain the trust of the electorate and to make the PN the people’s natural choice. The party will not be disheartened by this loss, but instead, this loss will spur on the party to redouble its efforts,” he said.

Busuttil also argued that it would be early to determine whether the PN managed to elect its third seat, putting his hopes in the transfer of votes.

“It is too early to determine whether the PN will manage to elect the third MEP seat. From the start, the PN always sought to elect the third seat and not to gain a majority of votes. Hopefully, the transfer of votes would elect the third seat,” he said.