PN executive to discuss general council again next week

The Nationalist Party’s executive committee will next week be again meeting to discuss the upcoming general council, in which Adrian Delia will be facing a confidence vote.

Newly elected executive president Alex Perici Calascione requested that the executive committee meet again on Tuesday, less than two weeks after a previous meeting, the PN said in a statement on Sunday.

The decision was taken after the group which had originally launched the petition asking for the general council to be convened and for Delia to face confidence vote, sent a letter to Perici Calascione this week, claiming that the question which would be asked to voters during the general council had been "completely changed" from the petition's original wording.

The group, led by ex-executive president Mark Anthony Sammut and former PN candidate Ivan Bartolo, also protested that the list of eligible voters had been frozen on the date Delia had called the general council - 4 July - rather than on the date their petition was submitted.

In a response which Perici Calascione sent to the petitioners on Saturday, he said that he had decided to request the executive committee meeting after holding a number of discussions with the party’s secretary general Clyde Puli, electoral commission president Francis Zammit Dimech, and Sammut.

The discussions revolved around the concerns raised by the petitioners.

The executive committee last met on 4 July, in a meeting which lasted late into the night and during which the PN’s leader himself called a general council - the party’s highest organ - in which he will be subjected to a confidence vote

Electoral commission appointed to oversee voting

The PN said in the statement that an electoral commission was appointed during that executive committee meeting, to ensure that the general council leadership vote is transparent and just.

It added that the process to verify the list of councillors eligible to vote had already started.

The electoral commission is composed of seven members, with Zammit Dimech as its chairperson.

Zammit Dimech was unanimously appointed by the executive committee. The other members are two representative from Elcom, and two persons from each of the PN’s factions, chosen by the two groups which had presented opposing petitions, on one side asking for Delia to leave, on the other calling for him to stay.

In June, PN councillors raised 150 signatures to demand a secret ballot during an extraordinary general council that will ask whether Delia should resign.

Subsequently, Sammut, Bartolo, MZPN secretary general Emma Portelli Bonnici, vice-president of the party's professionals' forum Martin Musumeci, and councillor Emvin Bartolo presented the Nationalist leadership with a petition calling for the council to discuss and vote whether members believe that, following the local and MEP elections results, Delia shoulder responsibility and resign.

In comments to the press as he emerged from the Dar Centrali when the last executive committee meeting had concluded, Delia said he had called the general council because this was in the best interest of the party and its future.

Later that month, Delia supporters have launched a counter-petition seeking to prevent the PN leader from facing a vote of confidence in the general council.