Delia Confirms He Approved Rabat Voter Challenge: PN Civil War Spills Into Malta’s Most Symbolic Village

**Delia Admits He Green-Lit Letter That Disputed 100 Voters’ Right to Cast Ballot in Rabat**

Nationalist Party heavyweight Adrian Delia has confirmed, on the record, that he personally approved the controversial 2022 letter which questioned the eligibility of roughly 100 voters in Rabat – a revelation that is sending tremors through an already jittery PN grassroots and re-opening old wounds about internal party democracy.

Speaking to NET News late Tuesday, the former PN leader said the decision was taken “to protect the integrity of the electoral process” within the party’s local committee elections. “I signed off on the letter, yes,” Delia said. “When we received credible evidence that some registrations did not meet the statutory residence requirements, we had a duty to flag it.”

The flagged voters – many of them young professionals who recently moved into Rabat’s characterful limestone townhouses – were ultimately allowed to vote after the party’s electoral commission dismissed the objection. But the episode has left a sour taste in Malta’s oldest village, where neighbourliness is currency and political grudges are stored like vintage wine.

Rabat, draped over Mdina’s medieval shoulder, has always been more than a postcard. It is a place where festa rivalry between St Paul’s and St Catald’s parishes can split families, where the band club bar doubles as a courtroom of public opinion, and where political allegiance is stitched into the lace of front-door curtains. Challenging a voter’s right to cast a ballot is, therefore, never a mere bureaucratic tick-box – it is read as an existential threat to identity.

One of the challenged voters, 27-year-old architect Clara* (name changed), told Hot Malta she felt “publicly shamed” after her name appeared on an internal PN circular. “I moved here from Sliema in 2020 because I fell in love with the quiet alleys and the cat-filled squares,” she said. “Suddenly I was being told I wasn’t ‘Rabati’ enough. It felt like a modern form of *parokkjali* – parish politics on steroids.”

Delia’s admission comes at a delicate moment. The PN is limping out of another bruising electoral defeat, factional trenches are being re-dug, and leadership hopefuls are circling like *kukkudr* (hooded crows) over Buskett. By owning the letter, Delia has effectively shielded Rabat committee president David Stellini – a close ally – from internal backlash, but he has also handed ammunition to critics who accuse him of stoking a “culture war” between traditional PN villages and urban newcomers.

Labour’s media machine wasted no time. Within minutes of the broadcast, ONE Radio was running sound-bites of Delia saying “I approved” on loop, juxtaposed with vox-pops of tearful first-time voters. Meanwhile, Facebook group “Rabat Residents – Past & Present” exploded: older commentators defended the right to scrutinise “fly-by-night” members; younger ones posted memes of Delia as a gate-keeper barring the Mdina bridge with a velvet rope.

Beyond the online skirmish, the scandal taps into a deeper Maltese anxiety: who gets to belong? As property prices push creatives and remote-workers into core villages, long-time residents fear cultural dilution. Traditionalists worry that the village *każin* will be turned into a boho cocktail bar; progressives argue that without new blood, Rabat will fossilise into a museum. The voter-eligibility row is merely the latest battlefield.

PN executive president Mark Anthony Sammut attempted to pour sand on the fire, issuing a statement that “internal electoral challenges are standard practice” and urging “all members to respect the final decision”. But the damage may already be etched into the Rabat limestone. One veteran *bandist* told Hot Malta he has cancelled his PN membership: “If they treat their own like strangers, how will they treat the rest of the country?”

For Delia, the confession is a calculated gamble. By wrapping himself in the flag of electoral purity, he reminds the conservative base of his 2017 pledge to “clean house”. Yet the optics of a former leader questioning voters in Malta’s most symbolic village risks reinforcing the perception that the PN is tone-deaf to demographic realities. In a country where only 4,000 votes separated the parties in 2022, alienating 100 motivated youngsters in a key district could prove costly.

The real winner, at least for now, is turnout. Sources inside both parties say registration booths for the forthcoming EP elections have seen a spike in new applicants from Rabat eager to “show them we exist”. Whether that momentum translates into ballots – or simply into more bitter WhatsApp forwards – will depend on how the PN leadership handles the next chapter. One thing is certain: in Rabat, the past is never past; it just changes address.