Adrian Delia: I’d have stopped Bernard Grech quitting PN if someone had called me

Adrian Delia: ‘I’d have tried to stop Bernard Grech resigning if I’d known’

Sliema’s seaside promenade was still buzzing with Tuesday-night joggers when Adrian Delia’s WhatsApp lit up with the news: Bernard Grech was about to walk. By the time the former Nationalist Party leader had parked his battered VW Golf outside his St Julian’s townhouse, Grech’s resignation letter was already circulating inside party WhatsApp groups. “If someone had picked up the phone, I’d have driven straight to his house and told him, ‘Bernard, don’t do this to us—not now,’” Delia told Hot Malta over a late-night ħobż biż-żejt in a quiet Gżira café.

The admission, delivered in Delia’s trademark Birkirkara baritone, is more than another chapter in PN’s perpetual soap opera; it is a raw glimpse into a party struggling to stay relevant on an island where politics is woven into the fabric of village festa gossip and band-club bravado. For older voters who remember Eddie Fenech Adami’s 1987 mass rallies, the spectacle of two leaders—one ousted, one outgoing—playing out their differences on Facebook timelines feels like sacrilege. For younger switchers who ticked Labour in 2013 and 2017, the PN’s latest blood-letting simply confirms the perception that the party is incapable of keeping pace with Malta’s turbo-charged economy.

Yet beneath the surface, Grech’s resignation threatens to fracture the very community networks that once delivered PN whole villages on a platter. In Żejtun, where the party holds only one seat on the local council, volunteers who spent Saturdays folding flyers now wonder whether fresh factional wars are worth the petrol money. “My wife told me, ‘Why waste evenings for people who can’t even keep their own house in order?’” admits Raymond Zahra, a 54-year-old plasterer and 20-year door-to-door canvasser. Similar murmurs echo in Mosta cafeterias and Victoria’s open-air market: if the Nationalists cannot display basic loyalty to their own, how can they ask loyalists to knock on doors in July heat?

Delia, ousted in a 2020 parliamentary coup after allegations—never proven—over his handling of party finances and personal loans, insists the PN still has a “soul” worth saving. “We are the party that gave Malta EU membership, free education, environmental NGOs,” he says, eyes fixed on a framed photo of Dom Mintoff hanging ironically above the café counter. “But we keep forgetting that Maltese politics is tribal. When the chief stumbles, the village blames the whole tribe.”

Local anthropologist Dr. Josianne Cassar argues that Grech’s departure cuts deeper than partisan point-scoring. “In a small society, political parties double as extended kinship networks,” she explains. “Your party is who christens your child, sponsors your football club, shows up with cassata when someone dies. When leadership collapses repeatedly, people experience it like a family divorce—someone you trusted has left, and you don’t know which cousin to invite to Sunday lunch.”

The timing is particularly bruising. With European Parliament elections looming, Labour’s machine is already rolling out village-hall Q&As starring Robert Abela in shirt-sleeves, promising EU funds for Gozo tunnels and Marsa flyovers. Meanwhile, PN factions are trading leaks with the enthusiasm of teenagers sharing TikTok dances. One WhatsApp screenshot seen by this newspaper shows a prominent MP joking about “Phase Two” before quickly deleting it. The joke? Nobody knows whether Phase Two means a new leader, a new party, or another decade in opposition.

Still, Delia believes a comeback is possible—if the PN learns to speak the language of everyday Malta. “People want to hear how we’ll protect their rental income from Airbnb rules, how we’ll keep their kids in Malta instead of Berlin, how we’ll fix traffic so they can reach Paceville without spending €20 on petrol,” he insists. “If we keep arguing over who sits at the head table at the wedding, we’ll miss the fact that the bride and groom have already left for the airport.”

Whether anyone will heed the warning remains to be seen. As the café owner stacks chairs, Delia pockets his phone—still silent—and heads into the humid night. Somewhere across the harbour, Labour’s skyline billboard flashes red, white and Labour-green: a nightly reminder that while Nationalists lick wounds, the electoral clock keeps ticking louder than the parish church bells.