David Thake calls on Delia to quit in stormy PN parliamentary group meeting

Updated at 3:40pm with statement from the Nationalist Party

A rowdy PN parliamentary group meeting was convened hastily on Sunday morning, during which MP David Thake called on Adrian Delia to resign his leadership.

Sources said Thake’s request for the meeting came on the back of allegations that Tumas magnate, and suspected Daphne Caruana Galizia murder mastermind, Yorgen Fenech had offered €50,000 in cash to Delia to ensure incumbent MEP David Casa does not get re-elected in 2019.

Thake had made the claims in June 2019 on TVM's Xarabank, before the public knew about Fenech's involvement in the journalist's murder.

The allegation was now reaffirmed by Melvin Theuma in court, who said Fenech had reported having made the offer to him. Theuma is the self-confessed murder middleman turned State witness.

Few MPs attended the parliamentary group meeting, held right before Delia went on NET TV for a live interview.

Attempts to contact Thake for a comment on Sunday afternoon were unsuccessful.

This is not the first time Delia's leadership of the PN has been under fire. As recently as February, he faced internal pressure to resign after polling data showed the Nationalist Party has been unable to gain ground despite the political turmoil government faced last December.

Delia, who was elected leader in 2017, won a PN confidence vote in 2019, which had taken place after a group of PN members said they were dissatisfied with his leadership.

READ ALSO | Abela loses trust, but Delia's rating fails to improve, MaltaToday survey shows

Thake's call on Delia to resign also comes after a MaltaToday survey published today showed that the PN leader's trust rating has failed to improve, despite Prime Minister Robert Abela's rating slipping to its lowest level since January.

Delia's trust rating ran at 17.8%, lagging almost 37 points behind Abela's, which stood at 54.5%.

Moreover, while support for the Labour Party declined to its lowest level since the start of the year - registering 45.9% in the survey - only 21.7% of respondents said they would vote for the PN, a marginal drop of less than half a percentage point when compared to May.

PN reaction

In a reaction to the report on this morning's meeting, the Nationalist Party said that it had been Delia to convene the parliamentary group, as he had pointed out during his NET TV interview.

The meeting, the PN, had one sole itemI on the agenda: "The rot this country is in as it is held hostage by the same criminal gang now run by a proxy Prime Minister unable and unwilling to tackle them head on."

"The PN Parliamentary Group is determined to put an end to this rot, strongly and unequivocally."