Delia: Malta needs to stop thinking of itself as constantly under attack

Newly-elected Nationalist Party leader Adrian Delia has said that Malta needed to stop thinking of itself as a country constantly under attack.

“There is no longer room for the politics of attacks. We need to start having constructive politics. Politics based on hope and the aspirations of Maltese people,” said Delia, in a brief televised interview on NET TV.

He said that the role of a politician meant a responsibility to bring across the “message of the people”, a message that must reflect the situation those people find themselves in.  

Delia acknowledged that there were many who were not yet convinced of his “new way” but stressed that the Nationalist Party would have to revolutionise the way it thinks.

“When we made the choice to go for independence. That was a huge mentality change, likewise, it required a change in mentality for us to decide to join the EU,” he said.  

Delia said he was sure he could convince people because he was convinced himself. He said that Malta lacked any natural resources and it therefore did not make sense to pit the country’s only resource – its people - against each other.

Under his watch, he said, the party would engage in constructive arguments and a healthy exchange of ideas.

“This way nobody loses, and Malta wins,” he added. “

Delia thanked all those “who might have preferred a different candidate” and who “were perhaps afraid of take a chance new candidate”, adding that he intended to meet with all those who were still concerned.

“I am convinced that one by one I can also convince them,” he said, insisting that this would make the party’s members not just members, but party ambassadors.

Asked about what his first 100 days would hold, Delia said he had spent his first half an hour of the day at the Nationalist Party club in Siggiewi, where he had heard people debating the weekend’s events.  

He said he was conscious of the fact that different people had different points of view and as such, he said that he needed to not lock himself up in an office and to continue listening to what people wanted.

“I want them to educate and inform the agenda of the Nationalist Party,” he said.

Moreover, he said it was also important to determine how he would be working together with the other leadership candidates.

The new leader said that he would also be meeting the PN’s parliamentary group to decide on a way forward to having the strongest Opposition possible, as well as those who work within the Nationalist Party’s structures.

He said independence was a change that united the party, and said that the leadership election would have the same effect.

“We have left what we have always been used to with fears, and risks,” said Delia, who insisted that there was now a need to put the election “behind us” and to look to the future.

“We have to do this not only for our party, but for the country.”