[WATCH] PN administrative council declares ‘unanimous support’ for Adrian Delia after four-hour meeting

PN administrative council declares ‘unanimous support’ for Adrian Delia after four-hour meeting

The Nationalist Party’s administrative council has “unanimously” declared its support for Adrian Delia after a meeting at the party’s headquarters.  

The council emerged from the building after a four-hour meeting without Delia, with Secretary General Clyde Puli reading out a prepared statement.

“The administrative council today unanimously declared its support for the leader Adrian Delia, and it condemns in the most categorical terms the coordinated and malicious attacks being aimed at him and the Nationalist Party,” Puli said.

During the meeting, the council, he said, had also discussed several new candidates the party will be fielding in the upcoming local council elections.

“Today the grassroots spoke and today the administrative has spoken. From now it is business as usual for the nationalist party,” Puli added.

READ ALSO: Adrian Delia’s leadership not on agenda as administrative council meets today

Delia eventually made his way out of the party’s headquarters as the journalists present were packing up to leave.

Asked whether his leadership of the party, or any of the allegations levelled against him in recent weeks had been discussed, the embattled leader thanked the party’s grass roots and sectional committees for “voluntarily” declaring their support for him and the party.

When it was pointed out that the meeting had taken four hours, Delia insisted that it was normal for administrative council meetings to drag on. “As you know we normally don’t speak about issues we discuss internally as a party but we felt, or rather the administrative felt, that particular issue needed to be addressed”

In recent weeks various attempts have been made by a disjointed number of party officials to force Delia out. The latest attempts at forcing Delia’s resignation were fuelled by the revelation that the PN leader’s wife - with whom is he is currently in process of separation proceedings -  had accused him of domestic violence against her and their children in official court documents.

The accusation came in the form of a reply to an court application filed by Delia asking the court to allow him to see his five children over the Christmas period. The situation has been further compounded by the fact that several private messages and videos were made public and were circulating on social media.

Sources who had previously spoken to MaltaToday said that while the leader may not have the support of a majority of the party’s MPs, he was still largely backed by the party’s members.

Despite opposition to his leadership, the PN leader has so far insisted he would not resign. Speaking during TVM radio current affairs programme ‘Ghandi xi Nghid’ – the latest in a series of interviews with the local media over the last two weeks – Delia categorically denied allegations of domestic violence levelled against him by his estranged wife. He also dismissed claims he still owed the taxman €64,000, insisting the claim had been a lie.

READ MORE: Nationalist Party activists see no reason for Adrian Delia to resign over ‘mere allegations’