Delia detractors welcome PN executive committee’s acceptance of petition

The group pushing for the resignation of Nationalist Party leader Adrian Delia yesterday expressed its satisfaction that the petition presented on 25 June by more than 150 councillors had been accepted by the party executive committee.

In the best interests of the party, the group said, it was agreed that there should be one question instead of three, and this would generate confusion.

On Tuesday, Delia said that the committee had unanimously agreed to put the question he invoked through article 30c of the party’s statute forward to the general council.

The question will be: “Should the leader of the Party, Adrian Delia, remain leading the PN until the next election?”

In a statement yesterday, the group also welcomed the agreement to provide it will the list of councillors eligible to vote, the possibility of early voting, a lengthy time afforded for voting on the actual day and any councillor who was removed from the list is given the chance of rectifying his or her position.

The PN’s executive committee met Tuesday evening, mainly to discuss the upcoming general council and in particular the question surrounding the vote of confidence in Leader Adrian Delia.

Delia, exiting the meeting, said that the committee unanimously agreed to put the question he invoked through article 30c of the party’s statute forward to the general council.

A petition had been filed calling for a vote of confidence in PN Leader Adrian Delia to take place at the general council.

The anti-Delia petitioners had originally called on the 1,500 general council members to vote on whether Delia should shoulder political responsibility for the recent two major electoral losses in the European Parliamentary and local council elections. A yes vote would have resulted in calling for Delia to shoulder responsibility, however reports read that the pro-Delia faction wanted to get the question changed, for a yes vote to endorse Delia. This situation ended up taking place, as per Delia’s statement.

Reports prior to the meeting had also read that this petition could have been deemed to be invalid. On this petition, the PN previously said that 84 signatures were either invalid or were signed by people with expired memberships. In a statement on Tuesday night however, the party said that it recognised the validity of ‘both petitions submitted in the past days.’

This is assumed to mean both the aforementioned petition, as well as the pro-Delia petition that had also been filed which urged the general council to reject the call made in the aforementioned petition, and also called on the party to launch a reform to turn the party into a winning one again.

The PN general council is set to meet on 27 July.