Birkirkara president Adrian Delia says he’s the outsider the PN needs for leader

Much of Adrian Delia is the quintessential lawyer, if the professional stereotype applies. The contender for the PN leadership post parried with TVM head of news Reno Bugeja with the ease of the courtroom duellist. His gruff intonation exuded confidence that may not have been conveyed by the soft-spoken Simon Busuttil. And often, his answers had to rest upon some chunky jargon before he could spell out a simple answer.

So is the father-of-five outsider candidate the man that the PN’s 1,200 councillors should offer to their 23,000 paid-up members to elect?

“I don’t want people to judge me simply for being a lawyer,” he told Bugeja at the suggestion that the legal class had fallen out of favour for political posts. “People have entrusted me with their money, problems, even their lives… there are good and bad lawyers, much as there are good and bad architects, doctors, painters, plasterers, journalists…

“I want people to meet me and see if they believe in my proposals and my ability to decide responsibly and in the best interest of our country.”

The Birkirkara FC president, the first to throw his hat in the ring, was even more sure that he was the outsider to be able to bring consensus and unity, and ‘clean up’ – what he described as “essential ingredients” for the next PN leader.

“Busuttil was not mistaken when he said this was a 10-year project. The next five years could need me,” he said when asked whether he envisaged a PN victory under his leadership.

“The fact that I am contesting does not mean in any way that the PN will be moulded in the way I think… the PN’s grassroots are the network that have to keep out feet to the ground. We have to learn from these people, strengthen these roots, to be further representative of the people. If we can build upwards from these people, without being caged in by the values of either conservatism or progressivism, we can take the best of these values and take our country forward.”

An example of this was his stand on gay marriage. “I am all for giving equal rights to spouses and any other person, but to disrobe our laws of the words ‘mother’ and ‘father’ is wrong, I disagree. This is the balance between conservatism and progressivism that should be sought.”

So Delia turns out to be in favour of divorce, but does not want to be drawn into a position on the legalisation of cannabis without heeding the advice of experts and sociologists. “We shouldn’t experiment. Certainly this is no partisan decision.”

He is also against the sale of citizenship. “The PN had removed its own investment programmes and this generated a hunger for such schemes. I feel that citizenship should be earned. I am against the sale of citizenship,” he said, adding that his firm was not an IIP agent.

He was less clear on embryo freezing and euthanasia. “I am open-minded enough to want to learn and discern, and I would decide on these issues with a clear conscience.”