It’s astonishing that the Nationalist Party has not asked Adrian Delia to withdraw from the race

Published: August 28, 2017 at 3:59pm

If Adrian Delia were a member of parliament, the Nationalist Party would have suspended him on the basis of the revelations made about him so far, asked him to resign his seat, or withdrawn the whip.

When far less serious revelations – petty ones, compared to money-laundering for a prostitution racket – were made about Joe Cassar, he not only resigned the whip, but his actual seat in the house. He left politics completely.

But now we have revelations of immense gravity about Adrian Delia, and he is permitted to stay in the race, when he would not have been permitted to stay under the party whip had he been in parliament already.

This is beyond incredible. It is a matter of credibility and consistency, and the Nationalist Party is being damaged beyond repair in public perception by the mere fact of allowing him to stay in the race. Whether he has a chance or being elected or not is at this stage completely irrelevant. Allowing him to continue in itself sends out a dreadful message.

What low standards. It is just beyond belief that it has come to this. Eddie Fenech Adami’s team blocked candidates for merely – if you can call it merely – cheating on their wife. Now this team can’t find it in themselves to block a candidate who opened an offshore account in Jersey specifically to allow his clients to use it to launder their money from a prostitution racket, with his full complicity.

They are all lawyers, and unlike the general public, they can understand the significance of the documents that have been published and the gravity of the crimes perpetrated by Delia’s ‘clients’ in league with him.

This couple – Rebecca Dimech and Andre Falzon – are close friends of Nationalist Party leadership contender Adrian Delia. Mr Falzon has just done time for drug-dealing and was released from prison last June.

Adrian Delia with (on left) Rebecca Dimech, whose boyfriend is a drug-dealer who has just been released from prison, and his wife, Nickie.