Death by a thousand leaks
Suddenly, all hell is let loose in the Nationalist Party.
Or rather, it’s not suddenly at all - it has been long in coming.
The leadership of Adrian Delia is swiftly being undermined by means of a thousand leaks.
We had the primal leak of serious marital trouble in the Delia couple. As surprising as that was, what was more surprising is the ease with which it was swiftly confirmed.
The party leader carried on with his usual duties but it was like he was in a bubble, going through the motions while all around him people were scheming and making plans.
All the majority that put him in his present post is now silent or, from now appears, acting underwater.
MaltaToday ran a story which said that one of Delia’s most assiduous supporters, Herman Schiavone, was ‘mulling over a dignified exit for his leader’.
Schiavone promptly denied that story but in no time at all, Manwel Delia’s blog dragged in a text exchange dating to last March between Adrian Delia’s wife Nickie Vella de Fremaux and Herman Schiavone himself in which Schiavone himself expressed, in quite graphic terms, his doubts about the viability of a continuation of Adrian Delia’s leadership.
One pertinent issue here is who leaked this exchange and what the leaker’s intention was.
And not to be outdone, or overtaken by events like what happened after the election and which led to Adrian Delia’s election as party leader, MaltaToday threw in the name of Claudio Grech, presumably without Grech’s approval, for party leader.
The rest of the party is keeping mum, except those who still root for Simon Busuttil to be reinstated as party leader.
This is no way for an alternative government, for the Opposition party, to find itself in, just six months before the European Parliament and the local councils elections.
The party must pick itself up and it cannot do so unless it tackles the main problems head-on. It must also avoid a very damaging bloodbath. And above all, it must stop this current death by a thousand leaks mass suicide.
The thing is, unless one is proved wrong, there is simply no alternative to the PN. Anybody who fantasises that a new party can be born out of nothing is simply dreaming.
The Nationalists and they alone must solve the deep problems their party finds itself in. However they do it is their choice. But they cannot postpone the needed clarification any longer.