[ANALYSIS] Bernard Grech’s tiritombla: 70, 80, or more than 90…

“I’m contesting this election again, and I’m asking for a strong mandate so that you can help me take hard and courageous decisions together,” Bernard Grech said in an interview on party TV on Sunday.

Grech initially failed to quantify what a ‘strong mandate’ is in comments to MaltaToday.

“Councillors are called upon to realise the party is theirs as well, and that they need to give the leader, who is the only person participating in the election, a strong mandate, so that I can take the needed decisions,” he told this newspaper.

Later, in comments to Times of Malta, Grech was more forthcoming albeit guarded in his reply. “Securing the support of less than 70% of party councillors would be a disappointing result,” Grech said but was reluctant to put a vote target.

Grech is the sole contender in the leadership race, and will only need a simple majority among party councillors to be confirmed as the party’s leader. But while it is nearly certain that Grech will be confirmed as leader his standing in the party depends on the scale of his victory. For in the absence of a contest, the vote will be essentially a vote of confidence in Grech.

67%, 95% or something in between?

There are two recent precedents against which Grech’s performance can be measured although both reflected different circumstances.

Facing internal threats to his one seat majority in parliament Lawrence Gonzi had asked councillors to confirm him as leader in 2012.

Gonzi had been first elected to lead the PN in 2004 with 808 votes from 859 votes cast in the second round of the leadership election (94%) after rival John Dalli withdrew and Louis Galea was eliminated.

In 2012 despite a rift with a number of backbench rebels including Franco Debono and Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando, he still retained the same level of support securing 851 votes out of 899 eligible voters (95%). Unlike Grech now, Gonzi was not obliged by party statute to hold the vote and the vote was seen as an attempt to reunify the party behind the leader.

It was a different story with a second confidence vote which Adrian Delia had won in July 2019 by just over two thirds of councillors (67%). On that occasion councillors had been asked on the ballot sheet “Do you want Adrian Delia to lead the PN until the next general election?” 920 councillors voted in favour of Delia, with 438 against and 22 invalidating the vote.

The vote came in the wake of infighting after the party received a thrashing in local and MEP elections in 2019. Party rebels had embarked on a torturous path of dethroning Delia through party structures by collecting 150 signatures from members of the general council to call an extraordinary meeting. But in so doing they failed to propose an alternative leader as they did a year later.

Delia reacted by convening the council and securing a strong vote for him to stay. Yet the vote still confirmed that a third of councillors were against him, and in September 2020 Bernard Grech who garnered the support of 69% of party members (tesserati) replaced Delia. 

It is highly unlikely for Grech to secure the same level of support for Gonzi in 2012. For while Gonzi faced the verdict of councillors as the country’s Prime Minister for eight years in a bid to silence a few dissenting MPs, Grech is facing councillors as a defeated Opposition leader who was only elected leader less than two years ago.

The spectre of Delia’s pyrrhic victory

Grech clearly needs a higher level of support then the two-thirds majority enjoyed by Delia in 2019. For this level of support was clearly not enough to heal divisions in the party, which came to a head in a leadership contest, a year later. 

Moreover, like Delia before him, Grech may find himself facing councillors again before general elections. This is because Grech has already committed himself to face another vote if his party fails to elect three MEPs in the European elections due in 2023.

So, while Grech is careful in not setting a benchmark for himself, the PN leader clearly needs stronger support then Delia had in 2019. The bare minimum for Grech would be to secure over 70% of the vote.

But party insiders suggest that in such a contest where Grech is running on his own he is expected to secure over 80% of all councillors in a way that internal opposition is relegated to low double digit or preferably single digit figures.

Grech vs all the disgruntled

After his election as leader in 2020 Grech said the party now had to “ensure that the Nationalist Party can once again become the natural party of the Maltese people,” but the party was once again thrashed in general elections in March in which Labour increased its majority from 35,000 to 40,000. 

Despite the horrible result Grech managed to avoid any direct challenge from any rival and will face councillors in a one-horse race.

The greatest disadvantage for Grech in this contest is that in the absence of rival candidates, the contest risks uniting a disparate coalition against him, composed of councillors who still resent Grech for toppling Delia but also of councillors ‘disappointed’ by the way Grech has side-lined Jason Azzopardi.

In the past weeks Grech has reinforced party unity by co-opting Adrian Delia and potential future rivals like Joe Giglio to key posts in his shadow cabinet. This may well help Grech secure more support among Delia loyalists. Yet it may not be enough to heal the wound. For despite Delia’s loyalty to Grech, some of his supporters may still harbour resentment.

Grech also faces other pockets of discontentment in the party including supporters of former MP Jason Azzopardi. The PN leader’s declaration that ‘all politicians have an expiry date’ triggered the former MP to launch a serious allegation that Grech promised a group of businessmen he was meeting before the election, that he would consider pardoning Yorgen Fenech. Grech denied this.

Grech also faces discontentment by candidates who felt side-lined in the electoral campaign and even accusations of collusion with big business interests as hinted by St Julian’s mayor and candidate Albert Buttigieg in another missive about a meeting during which “a fat cat” was told by an un-named party official that he would shut him up.

Buttigieg struck a raw nerve among voters (and non-voters) disenchanted by the dominance of big business but it is likely that such concerns could be secondary for councillors.

In short, the greatest risk in such a contest for Grech is the sum of different disgruntled factions in his party who could use this vote to cut him down to size or even force him to reconsider his decision to remain leader despite losing the election with an even higher margin than 2017.

On the other hand, the greatest advantage Grech has is that most councillors are now tired of infighting and may well opt for a strong vote to put an end to the sad spectacle, which has contributed to the party’s electoral failure. For if they deny Grech a strong mandate, councillors will risk prolonging the party’s agony.

Also weighing on the result is Grech’s only significant achievement in the election; the generational renewal of the party’s parliamentary benches. And while some councillors may resent how old timers were side-lined from the shadow cabinet, others may interpret the groundswell of change in the party as a sign of hope, which needs nourishment in a more stable and less fractious environment. 

Ultimately, since this election is taking place among a restricted number of party councillors and not among party members, much depends on the kind of reassurances Grech is offering councillors in his face-to-face meetings.

While in public Grech hints at “difficult decisions” for which he needs a strong mandate, it is in these one-to-one meetings with councillors that Grech is explaining his plans for the party.

Yet it remains doubtful whether councillors are still in synch with the electorate, and the greatest risk facing the party may well be the indifference of the electorate, which may well have concluded that parties like candidates also have an expiry date.