Rebel MPs 'fully confident' Comodini Cachia will be appointed Opposition leader

The 19 PN parliamentary groups members who backed a no confidence motion in Adrian Delia said they have full confidence that Therese Comodini Cachia will be appointed Opposition leader.

The rebel MPs insisted in a statement on Sunday that they would not be giving up in the face of challenges, and would continue doing their best within the Nationalist Party's structures, Parliament, and directly with the electorate, so as to ensure Malta will once again have a strong Opposition.

"The 19 members of the PN parliamentary group are fully confident that the mechanism provided by the Constitution will lead to Therese Comodini Cachia being appointed as leader of the Opposition, according to the unanimous choice of the 19 parliamentary group members," they said.

Comodini Cachia was nominated to President George Vella by the MPs earier this week. However, no official pronouncement from the President’s Office had yet been made on whether she would be sworn in as Opposition leader. A PN source told MaltaToday that Delia was ready to convene an executive committee meeting on Tuesday to form a board of discipline to discuss the rebels’ actions. 

Highlighting that "what is right will always prevail" ("is-sewwa jirbaħ żgur") - a rallying cry first used by former prime minister Eddie Fenech Adami in the turbulent 1980s - the rebel MPs said they were transmitting a message of courage for all those who always supported the PN, and for all Maltese people of goodwill.

The group of 19 said they had been seeing and feeling the worries which card-holding party members had about the situation the PN was going through. "The 19 parliamentary group members assure that, in every decision which they have taken, and in every decision which they will take, the interest of the tesserati, the party and the country is at the forefront," they said.

The rebel MPs said they understood that they were elected to Parliament through the votes of card-holding members and of the rest of the Nationalist electorate, and would therefore continue working to strengthen the PN and to once again make it a suitable and strong Opposition for the country.

They added that the developments of the past days had shown how the electorate which had always supported the PN was keen to see the changes necessary for the country to have an Opposition "led by a person of integrity, seriousness, honesty and credibility and who places the national interest and that of the Nationalist Party before their own."