PN Leadership Election Night: Chaos, Cheers and a Nation Watching

Inside the PN’s chaotic leadership election night: cheers, tears and a party staring at itself in the mirror
By Hot Malta Newsroom

Midnight had already tolled from the belfry of Mosta Dome when the first shout went up. “Viva Bernard! Viva Adrian!” The voices clashed, not in unison but in competition, ricocheting off the limestone façade of the Nationalist Party’s Pietà headquarters like rival festa petards. Inside, the air tasted of sweat, espresso and that particular Maltese summer-night stickiness that no amount of industrial fans can chase away. Elderly canvassers fanned themselves with unused ballot sheets while TikTok-ing teenagers filmed tear-streaked selfies. For a moment, the PN’s grand hall felt less like a political nerve-centre and more like a village kazin the day the band club splits.

The count had begun at 20:00 sharp—Maltese time, which meant 20:27 after the last pastizzi tray was cleared. Boxes from 41 polling stations were stacked beneath a faded 1987 election banner: “Malta Tagħna Lkoll.” Someone had scrawled “2024?” in red marker underneath, the question mark dagger-sharp. Party officials wore matching white masks, but Covid was the last thing on anyone’s mind; the real virus was uncertainty. Would the PN graft a fresh face onto a 143-year-old body, or cauterise the wound with a familiar one?

Outside, the queue of journalists snaked past the makeshift bar run by a Sliema wine vendor who’d joked he’d recoup 2020’s losses in one night. By 23:15 he had. The rumour mill span faster than the industrial fans: “Delia’s ahead by 52 votes in Gozo.” “No, Grech took Żabbar by a landslide.” Each whisper travelled from hall to courtyard to the live-rolling Times of Malta blog, then bounced back amplified, like a village church bell echoing across the harbour. One candidate’s wife clutched a rosary; another’s husband chain-smoked on the steps where, in 1977, a young Eddie Fenech Adami had once addressed protesters. History here is never archived; it loiters.

At 01:03 the chief electoral commissioner, a retired judge who still pronounces “complaint” with a rolled ‘r’, mounted a plastic chair. Silence fell so suddenly that the crickets in the nearby fields could be heard. “Valid votes: 10,471. Bernard Grech: 5,401. Adrian Delia: 5,070.” A collective gasp, half relief, half lament, rose like the opening chord of a banda march. Grech’s supporters erupted into the party anthem, “Sbejħa Malta,” voices cracking on the high notes. Delia’s backers stood frozen, some clutching blue-and-green flags that suddenly looked too heavy. A woman in her seventies, wearing the kind of lace fan favoured by village statue bearers, whispered, “U ejja, let’s not do a 2017 again,” and burst into tears.

The cultural subtext was impossible to miss. In a country where festa rivalries can split families over which saint gets the best fireworks, the PN’s civil war was simply politics catching up to village DNA. By sunrise, Facebook was a battlefield of “#TeamBernard” versus “#AdrianQalbieni” memes, complete with pastizzi emojis. In Għargħur, a band club committee cancelled its morning rehearsal “out of respect,” a very Maltese euphemism for “we can’t face each other yet.”

Yet beneath the drama lies a deeper tremor. The PN is not just a party; it is one of the twin pillars on which Malta’s post-colonial identity was built. When it wobbles, the whole balcony rattles. Grech now inherits a parliamentary group split 19-18, a debt mountain of €7 million, and a grassroots that trades WhatsApp voice notes like wartime letters. The morning after, café chatter in Valletta shifted from “Who won?” to “Can they survive?” Taxi drivers quoted Mintoff, bakers quoted Sant, everyone quoted their nanna.

Still, there were gestures of reconciliation. At 03:30, Delia walked into the hall where Grech was thanking volunteers. Cameras clicked. The two men embraced, Maltese style—three pats on the back, cheeks barely touching. Someone started clapping; someone else muttered “kummiedja.” But for a fleeting instant, the limestone walls absorbed the applause, and it sounded almost like unity.

Conclusion
By dawn, the wine vendor had packed up, the last ballot paper was folded into an archive box, and the industrial fans finally fell silent. Malta woke up to a PN that had chosen continuity over convulsion—yet the margin, thinner than a communion wafer, guarantees the drama is far from over. In a country whose national story is written in dialectic—Labour versus Nationalist, parish versus parish, fireworks versus silence—the leadership election was less an ending than another chapter in an endless serial. The party that once negotiated independence now faces the harder task: negotiating with itself. If it fails, the tremor will be felt well beyond Pietà’s doors, in every village square where the band still plays, and the colours blue and green still matter. And if it succeeds? The pastizzi vendor is already taking pre-orders for the next vote—in, say, 18 months’ time. Maltese summers are long, and memories just a little bit longer.