Updated | Chris Said, Adrian Delia support calls for commission to scrutinise candidates

Nationalist MP Chris Said and lawyer Adrian Delia are supporting calls for the setting up of a commission that scrutinises candidates throwing their name in the hat for the leadership contest.

Both Said - former secretary general of the party - and Delia - Birkirkara F.C. - both took to Facebook to voice their support.

Taking to Facebook, Dione Borg – a veteran journalist who has been working with the PN’s media arm for several years – proposed that the PN sets up an internal commission.

“Such a commission would ensure the highest political standards required,” Borg, who is also secretary of Floriana F.C., said.

He added that the commission should focus on a number of issues, including placing an emphasis on the professional aspect of the candidates and the assets they hold.

Taking on board Borg’s proposal, Said reminded the Nationalist Party that its outgoing leader always pushed for honest politicians who served the party with a sense of duty and goodwill.

“These are the principles that Simon Busuttil, like all his predecessors, wove into the very fabric of the party’s beliefs,” the former Gozo minister said, adding that these principles were the foundation of the party, without which the PN and the country’s democracy would collapse.

On Facebook, Said also reminded that it was Busuttil himself who had set up a commission to scrutinise candidates running for the general election on a PN ticket.

Likewise, the Gozitan MP said, the same system should be adopted now in order to ensure that there is nothing in the professional life – or business ties – of any potential leader that could spell trouble for the PN.

On his part, Delia said: "Completely behind Dione's suggestion, which as he would remember, I had provoked, promoted and insisted be applied at all levels for any one occupying a senior role in the football world both at club and administration level - indeed in politics it should not only be the party leader but every candidate wishing to serve our people."