[ANALYSIS] Adrian Delia: The truce after the victory

PN leader Adrian Delia’s strategy of confronting his internal enemies has paid off.

His adversaries banked on him succumbing to the pressure of leaked videos and recordings from his personal life, so that he could leave of his own free will. But Delia refused to budge, galvanising his internal support by going on the warpath and challenging his adversaries to come out in the open to confront him. They lacked the numbers and will to do so, and Delia won.

So Delia has survived and could probably now dictate the terms of a forthcoming internal truce. Yet his enemies can play a waiting game, only to emerge again with their daggers drawn out against him after May’s European elections.

This latest episode has given Delia one advantage. Come next May he can blame the PN’s defeat on those who did not rally behind him. But he still needs to rally the party around him to avoid being humiliated at the polls. For while the party will most certainly lose these elections by a considerable margin, the scale of defeat will have a determining factor weighing on his future as PN leader. The fact that expectations are so low may well turn out to be Delia’s greatest advantage.

With the PN gaining very little from Labour and at risk of losing votes to third parties, the party simply cannot afford to lose more from its core 2017 voters. That explains why last Sunday, Delia reached out to that segment of Nationalist Party voters who intend to abstain in next May’s elections to spite their leader and force the party to replace him.

Delia seems to have lost any hope that he can win these voters over to his side. Instead he panders to their greater antipathy for Joseph Muscat and Konrad Mizzi. “If you think this government is a corrupt government and you don’t vote in the election, you are voting for Joseph Muscat,” Delia said. “If you are thinking that it is better to remain home, you will be giving your consent to [Tourism Minister] Konrad Mizzi.”
The problem for Delia is that in doing so he is confirming that the only thing which keeps the various factions together, is antipathy towards Labour and not an inspiring vision of a better future. And that makes the party look reactive and inward-looking.

Catch-22 for anti-Delias

On the other hand the question facing his internal enemies is: Should they contribute to Delia’s demise by making sure that their own party loses heavily in the next elections? The risk of causing further embarrassments for Delia is that it will turn them into ideal scapegoats after the defeat. Yet they also know that if Delia does better than expected, he will be strengthened. They have also managed to turn Delia into a victim of byzantine plots, thus making him a more likeable figure.

Moreover by sabotaging Delia, the anti-Delia faction risks sacrificing some of their own like David Casa who will be also be contesting MEP elections. Candidates like Casa cannot afford to alienate the party’s leadership which secures access to the party machinery and media. This explains why Casa was present in last Sunday’s activity.

If party divisions are reflected in abstentions or in a large number of non-transferable votes – where each faction votes for its own candidates – the party may even put its second seat at risk, even if this prospect remains remote.

The uneasy truce

This makes the prospect of an uneasy truce between now and the end of May very likely. While in the next weeks, Delia is bound to sound more conciliatory, his henchmen will probably be more bellicose.

A taste of this was given by PN media chief Pierre Portelli’s revelation in court that blogger Manuel Delia was Adrian Delia’s ‘ghostwriter’ before he was elected PN leader. While this was clearly meant to discredit the anti-Delia blogger who has been depicted as a mercenary, it also showed how fluid political alliances are in Malta. For the brief collaboration between Adrian Delia’s campaign team and the former Austin Gatt aide turned civil society activist and blogger, further blurs the distinction between the party’s old guard and the new guard.

On again, off again

But by taking the role of conciliator Delia risks committing the same mistake he has already committed in the past, periodically shifting from bellicose confrontation with the old guard to periods of reconciliation and inclusion.

Delia, who only last year had appointed Busuttil as his spokesperson for good governance, had already over-reached himself when he tried to kick Busuttil out from his parliamentary group after the publication of the Egrant inquiry’s conclusion, only to retract in the face of internal pressure. Delia’s latest conciliatory messages which contrast with his recent bellicose messages may further disorient opponents and supporters alike.

On Sunday Delia even adopted a conciliatory tone towards Occupy Justice, which had been the target of the party’s media in the past weeks, insisting in his speech that it was not true that the PN intended to attack the pressure group.

Beyond the Daphne crowd

Yet there is one major assumption Delia is making which may backfire against him. He seems to believe that PN voters who intend abstaining belong to one distinct category: the crowd which attends vigils for slain journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia and whose antipathy for him pales in comparison to their resentment for Muscat.

Delia may hope that the prospect of Muscat winning with a bigger margin may be enough to bring back some of these voters in line. To do so Delia risks becoming more belligerent in confronting the government on corruption. This also risks alienating other categories of voters who welcomed Delia’s less confrontational approach.

Moreover, the PN is at risk of further losses to Labour or third parties simply because it is uninspiring, beset by factional infighting and its brand looks inferior to Labour’s. Now the party will be facing a nationwide test at local council level where the party’s viability in regions like the south of Malta and Gozo will be severely tested. Trying too hard to appease one category of voters may well backfire amongst other categories. The defection of Zejtun councillor Furtu Caruana could be symptomatic of the PN’s disconnection from southern voters.

The party cannot afford to take its own middle-of-the-road voters for granted. For, as happened in 2017, some may still defect to Labour which has positioned itself in the centre ground of Maltese politics. Moreover aspects of the Delia brand like the increased doses of moral conservatism may be off-putting to liberal voters whose values may be more in synch with Muscat’s.

Delia’s calculation at the moment may be that he will only be able to impose his ‘new way’ on the party if he minimises his party’s losses in next May’s elections. Yet the few glimpses of the ‘new way’ we have is an inward-looking tribal affirmation of partisan identity. This impression was amplified by Delia’s defence of PN supporters involved in a brawl with Labour Party supporters during Friday’s live recording of Xarabank.

“Labour supporters insulted and attacked our people, and what did they expect? For us not to defend our people? Yes, we’ll speak out and make our voices heard and no one will shut us up,” Delia said.

Delia may have won the hearts of grassroot party activists through his insurgency against the party’s ‘old guard’, but his brand may still lack both the sparkle and intellectual depth to win over M.O.R. voters.

Delia may start making progress if he dedicates his energies to rebranding his party and reclaim the middle ground of Maltese politics. That can also include confronting the government on corruption but he has to do so on his own terms and not to appease a restricted constituency which keeps him from reaching out to other kinds of voters.

Who are Adrian Delia’s internal adversaries?

Nobody has lent his face to the recent rebellion against Delia. The MPs who spoke against Delia to the media have done so anonymously.
The only MP to come close to express reservations in public was Jason Azzopardi who used football analogies to criticise Labour exponents who were defending Delia, adding that nobody would want to give advice to one’s opponents “unless they have a hidden agreement to safeguard their common interests”. But even Azzopardi subsequently declared that he had no problem with Delia.

Beppe Fenech Adami who was rumoured to have been behind an attempt to convince MPs to call for Delia’s removal was amongst party supporters who greeted the PN leader in B’Kara last week. The Sliema local committee was the only official organ which refused to approve a motion of support for Delia. On the other hand open calls for his resignation have been made by Occupy Justice – whose vigils are regularly attended by certain Nationalist MPs and present and former party activists. Delia is also a regular target of Manuel Delia, a former Austin Gatt aide who has now re-invented himself as a civil society activist and blogger.