[WATCH] PN executive president Mark Anthony Sammut resigns: ‘Result is disastrous and others should do the same’

Mark Anthony Sammut resigns over disastrous PN result in elections

The president of the Nationalist Party executive committee Mark Anthony Sammut has resigned his role as Nationalist MPs and the PN executive are meeting for the first time since their drubbing at the European and local council elections.

The MPs and the executive committee are discussing the co-option of a new MP in the wake of the resignation of David Stellini.

MaltaToday is informed Sammut’s resignation came by way of assuming responsibility for the results of the PN at the European and local elections, in which the PN lost their third seat in Brussels, and key local councils like Valletta, Siggiewi, and St Paul's Bay.

Sources said that secretary-general Clyde Puli and leader Adrian Delia asked Sammut to reconsider his resignation but he refused, saying that if the leadership was part of the problem it could not be part of the solution.

Debono (left) was one of Adrian Delia's staunchest supporters throughout the leadership campaign

He later read a long statement outside the party HQ, in which he said he was resigning because of the disastrous PN results and that others with more repsonsibility should do the same.

The MPs were scheduled to discuss who would take the seat of Stellini after resigning to return to his job at the EPP in Brussels.

Xaghra councillor Kevin Cutajar

They voted 42-40 to have Jean Pierre Debono return to the House as a co-opted MP.

David Stellini resigns

Lawyer Kevin Cutajar was the other nomination for the seat. The push for Cutajar presented the PN executive with a compelling argument to have a Gozitan take up the seat of Gozitan MP David Stellini, and in that way, also scupper the chances of seeing PN leader Adrian Delia push to have Jean Pierre Debono, the former MP who gave up his seat for Delia’s co-option in 2017, back in the House.

The Nationalist MP David Stellini officially resigned his seat in the House of Representatives, to return to his posting with the European People’s Party in Brussels.

In an interview with MaltaToday, the Gozitan MP, who ran for MEP, expressed his dismay at the excessive partisanship of Maltese politics.

“I came from Brussels to Malta in a bid to work for a politics of unity, that can give people results. But there is a group of people who want the politics of the arena... a battle between gladiators,” he said.

“I call it the politics of symbiosis, because the large gladiator needs to have a smaller gladiator to fight against, and the smaller gladiator needs to pick a fight with the large opponent to keep its fans alive: the PN must be careful not to fall into this battle because it will not win it,” Stellini said. “The Maltese system is not conducive to the politics of unity I embrace.”