Simon’s week

At 6.50pm on Tuesday Adrian Delia and Clyde Puli got up from their desks in Parliament and headed out.

Ten minutes later, as he had announced in the afternoon, Simon Busuttil began to speak. The Strangers’ Gallery was packed with Simon’s supporters: there were more people there than there had been on Budget day and the Speaker himself remarked on the attendance.

The words of the speech have been reported in the media, with Wednesday’s In-Nazzjon prefacing Busuttil’s name with ‘IdDeputat’ as it had been ordered to.

It was not just Delia and Puli who absented themselves from Busuttil’s speech: the two deputy leaders were also absent. Behind them, in the Chamber, there remained 16 Opposition MPs – not all of them proSimon.

The next day, the PN held a series of meetings – the Executive and then the Administrative committee. Then the PN announced that it was going to take part in yesterday evening’s protest. Had Delia and his allies changed their minds?

Not at all, Party insiders told me. For them, the presence at the protest was just a photo op to see Simon next to Adrian.

The above shows – in all its starkness – the state in which the PN finds itself today. There will be no regicide, Adrian will continue to be the leader. But, increasingly, he is being forced to take decisions he does not want to take.

At the meeting of the Executive Committee, for instance, an idea was broached, that the Party reverses the decision it took on the morrow of the Egrant inquiry decision to relegate Simon. But nothing was done.

It is well known that Busuttil feels hurt every time he is described as ‘ id-Deputat’ instead of as the former leader. But still NET and the party media are under strict orders to keep him as ‘ id-Deputat’. These orders, as far as is known, do not originate from Delia himself.

There are those in the Party who are – at all costs – against Busuttil. But, as seen by the attendance in Parliament on Tuesday, there are many who are very much in favour of him. There was talk, last summer, of a majority being for Busuttil and against Delia but no paper was signed and the President was not going to be asked to nominate a new Leader of the Opposition. There will be no regicide.

But what happened in Court on Monday, when Keith Schembri withdrew his libel case against Busuttil and thus did not testify in the case, has dramatically changed matters. Busuttil and his friends received an avalanche of support, some even from outside the Party and a few from the other side.

There is now a PN motion but one does not envisage any Labour MP voting in favour – this is a different situation to when Carmelo Mifsud Bonnici and Richard Cachia Caruana were voted against in the dying days of the Gonzi government.

Notwithstanding everything that has been said so far, there has been a slight change in that Busuttil himself – and some of his friends – have now been in