The PN’s wilderness years: Three leaders, two defeats and an abortion

SIMON THE ANOINTED

Simon Busuttil, whose fame grew as the technocratic voice and poster boy of the EU membership campaign, had already been elected as Lawrence Gonzi’s deputy leader in 2012. It was a contest in which Busuttil trounced then Finance Minister Tonio Fenech, winning the support of 72.4% of councillors. He was deployed as a crucial peg in the PN’s electoral strategy in 2013. But ultimately, Busuttil ended up with egg on his face in a campaign that saw him lend his image to Gonzi’s colossal defeat.

The contest:

Bruised by Gonzi’s defeat, Simon Busuttil was challenged by party stalwarts Mario de Marco, Francis Zammit Dimech, and wild card Raymond Bugeja. Polls by MaltaToday showed Busuttil to be considerably more popular with PN voters, and De Marco more popular with floaters and Labour voters. Both candidates identified with middle-of-the-road and centrist policies, with Busuttil sounding more hawkish towards Labour and De Marco slightly more liberal. De Marco, who had secured 38.5% of the vote, dropped out of the race after Busuttil secured 50.3% of councillors’ votes in the first round.

The outcome:

Busuttil immediately extended an olive branch to De Marco by creating a second deputy leadership post, thus avoiding the lingering resentment that had weighed down his predecessor, Lawrence Gonzi, following his victory over a bitter John Dalli in 2004. Busuttil’s other deputy leader was Beppe Fenech Adami. While this brought internal peace, the arrangement appeared too much like a dynastic pact between the two most powerful political families.
The party plodded on, with divisions kept under wraps as it abstained from a crucial vote on civil unions for same-sex partners. The 2014 MEP elections saw the party lose by the same margin as the previous year. That changed after Labour was shaken by the Panamagate scandal in 2016, which gave Busuttil an opportunity to mobilise supporters. However, this also fed the illusion of a shortcut—returning the PN to power through an unprecedented coalition with the maverick Marlene Farrugia, who managed to get elected to parliament along with Godfrey Farrugia, without adding anything to the PN’s pool of votes.
The coalition ultimately lost by 35,280 votes—or 40,126 when PD candidates are excluded from the equation.

The legacy and the lesson:

Despite being defeated, Busuttil’s strong stance against Labour’s corruption was partly vindicated by the subsequent conclusions of magisterial inquiries. His final act as leader was to secure his party’s support for marriage equality, thus closing a thorny chapter in the party’s relationship with the LGBTQ community.

However, as a politician, Simon Busuttil failed to provide his party with a solid new identity beyond opposing corruption and struggled to connect with working class voters, particularly those in the southern districts. Moreover, he had already lost political currency before even becoming leader. Owing to his anointment in 2012, he was not elected as a fresh face untarnished by the PN’s baggage, but was instead remembered for his gaffes, particularly his characterisation of PL candidate Deborah Schembri as having a “Nationalist face” during a debate. He may be credited with coming to the party’s rescue in its hour of need, after initially turning down an offer to become PN general secretary, but ultimately, both he and the party lost.

Furthermore, defeat left him bitter and delusional in his constant hope that Joseph Muscat’s mask would fall off to reveal Labour’s ugly face. Metsola’s decision not to contest the PN election could well have been motivated by fear of repeating Busuttil’s fate, that of burning precious political capital to answer the PN’s desperate call for a knight in shining armour to come for its rescue. The only difference is that Metsola, now a household name in Europe, has even more political capital to lose by immersing herself in a premature, brutal mud fight with Robert Abela. Things could get even worse for Metsola if she lends her name to the PN without having full control as its undisputed leader, as happened to Busuttil when he ran as Gonzi’s deputy in 2013.

READ ALSO | Roberta Metsola will not contest PN leadership, insists she cannot abandon Brussels role

DELIA THE INSURGENT

The 2017 electoral drubbing left the PN stunned, with Busuttil assuming responsibility and vacating the post—thus triggering an open contest in which, for the first time in the party’s history, its membership had the final say. This triggered an insurgency personified by Adrian Delia, an outsider who was not even an MP and who benefitted from the backlash against Busuttil’s association with Daphne Caruana Galizia. Delia appealed to the party’s conservative roots by raising the spectre of ‘religio et patria’ in his first major speech after his election.

The contest:

Despite concerted attempts to remove him from the race following a due diligence report which raised various concerns on offshore activity reported by Caruana Galizia, Delia still emerged as the frontrunner in a vote among councillors in which he secured 45.7% against Chris Said’s 31.5%, Alex Perici Calascione’s 22% and Frank Portelli’s 0.8%. He went on to secure a 52.7% majority among party members in the party’s first-ever primary against Chris Said.

The outcome:

Legitimised by the popular vote, Delia felt confident enough to reshape the party in a more conservative direction, triggering a revolt by more liberal voices on issues ranging from leave for prospective parents undergoing IVF treatment to the ratification of the Istanbul Convention. Ultimately, however, it was the assassination of Caruana Galizia that derailed his leadership. As one of her journalistic targets, Delia found it increasingly difficult to lead the party in a highly charged political atmosphere that brought groups like Repubblika to the fore.
His decision to side-line Busuttil after the publication of the Egrant Inquiry—which found no evidence of alleged cash transfers from the Azerbaijani ruling family to the Muscats—triggered further internal strife, which regained momentum after Delia’s failure to make any inroads in the 2019 MEP elections. During that campaign the party adopted as its main issues anti-abortion and anti-immigration stands.
Subsequently, the PN was once again outflanked by civil society in protests that contributed to the fall of the Muscat government in December 2019. The final blow for Delia came in the form of a series of polls showing a widening trust gap between him and new Labour leader Robert Abela, just before and during the pandemic.

The legacy and the lessons:

Adrian Delia was the only PN leader in post-independence history to be denied the possibility of having his leadership tested in a national election. His premature dismissal in 2020 left many of his supporters disillusioned, and this partly explains the PN’s loss of 12,463 votes compared to its 2017 tally. In this context, Delia’s backers felt their champion was never truly given a fair chance, with his short-lived leadership undermined by persistent internal opposition. His forced departure also cemented the perception of a ruthless PN establishment that is unforgiving with one of their own—let alone political adversaries.

The incoming leader, Bernard Grech understood this and proceeded to integrate his predecessor in the frontbench, particularly after Delia was vindicated by the court decision to revoke the Vitals hospitals contract. By fronting the legal case against Vitals, Delia had also dispelled claims—rampant before 2020—that he was Labour’s Trojan horse.

Like him or hate him, Delia remains a major player in the PN, and any new leader has to contend with his loyal base of supporters. In this sense, Metsola’s openness to a second Delia term in an unconventional arrangement which would see her take on a symbolic role is a recognition of this reality—even if it could be seen as a throwback among the wider electorate.

READ ALSO | Strong-arming Adrian Delia into submission

BERNARD THE PACIFIER

Bernard Grech found himself elected leader on the merits of his reputation as an effective TV debater who could defeat Adrian Delia, while sharing a number of his qualities. Grech, like Delia, was an outsider and someone who could communicate with voters turned off by the party’s perceived elitism. In this sense, Grech’s candidature was not just triggered by Delia’s failing numbers, but also shaped by polls showing him as the only palatable alternative at the time.

The contest:

Grech easily won the contest held among party members in October 2020, securing 69.3% of the vote against Delia’s 30.7%. The scale of his victory suggested a strong popular mandate, but underestimated the bitterness felt by Delia supporters, who remained distrustful of the new leader—even if Delia immediately signalled his willingness to work with him.

The outcome:

Grech initially saw a boost in trust polls pitting him against Abela. On the surface, he also seemed to have pacified the party. But Delia initially kept a distance, while Grech struggled to gain momentum or a defining issue on which to confront Abela. After less than two years as leader, the PN found itself trounced in a paradoxical general election in which Labour won by 39,474 votes—despite losing 8,269 votes from its 2017 tally. The reason was that the PN had lost 12,463 votes. Grech put on a brave face in defeat—unlike Simon Busuttil—visiting the counting hall and comforting party activists. But his refusal to step down despite losing a general election further perpetuated the perception that he was a lame duck. He also set a modest and achievable target: electing three Nationalist MEPs in the subsequent European election held in 2024.

Nonetheless, Grech did manage to energise the party base in the wake of the Vitals court decision, using it as an opportunity to reach out to Delia and ensure party unity, gaining momentum for the MEP elections which saw the party gaining ground by default, thanks to a higher abstention and protest vote in the PL. But despite cutting the vote gap to 8,000 votes, Grech remained an unpopular leader—eclipsed by Roberta Metsola’s profile as President of the European Parliament. This also increased the perception that Grech was simply keeping the seat warm for Metsola. This state of indecision, coupled with Grech’s caution not to rock the boat, paralysed his leadership, leading to the current impasse.

Legacy and lessons:

Grech restored internal peace between the PN factions and can be credited with bringing an end to the party’s internal civil war. However, the PN remains in debt and financially vulnerable, which helps explain his hesitancy in confronting potential party donors among developers—leaving him unable to give voice to public anger on one of the few issues where Labour remains deeply unpopular.

His stance on Manoel Island exemplified this state of paralysis. The lesson for the PN is that it can’t afford to have a lame duck leader left in the shadow of a party queen who remains hesitant to descend from the EU stars to the Pietà stables. Yet this paralysis may well trigger an insurgency, risking the same divisions that characterised the stormy Delia era. In short, by trying to force Metsola’s hand, Grech may well leave the party stuck between a rock and a hard place.

READ ALSO | Bernard Grech urges PN to make sure leadership contest is peaceful