So much for that landslide: just 400 people stood in the way of a victory for common sense and decency

Delia and his war-room staff are totally stunned at the poor result obtained. So much for boasting that they had stopped campaigning after the first round at the ballot because their job was done.

Delia’s result of 52.7% of the vote shows that the Nationalist Party does not want and is not feeling the need to sweep everybody out. The result states the opposite. Remember that this is not a general election between two opposing parties but the election of a party leader by party members who should share the same political ideals.

This worst possible result Delia could have hoped for other than 51% or an outright loss. It weakens him substantially and makes it clear that the big talk and boasting and triumphalism of the last few weeks was designed to pan out as a self-fulfilling prophecy but did not reflect reality of sentiment among party members.

Delia is lying about the “plan” he says he has to get a seat in parliament. He has no such plan. If he had, we would know about it by now because somebody would have leaked or somebody else would have worked out what the plan was. This is not rocket science. There are only fixed ways in which you can get a seat.

The only way out for him is to offer a deputy leadership post to Chris Said. He has no alternative. But if Said accepts he will be signing his own political death warrant or suicide note, because it would be read by those who backed him as spineless flip-flopping. The party has enough spineless flip-floppers as it is and this makes it increasingly wet and repulsive.

Something bad is going to happen because it is going to be psychologically impossible for decent MPs who have worked hard for the Nationalist Party for years, and who are politically experienced, to take orders from an intruder with no political experience and to have faith in his judgement. This would happen in any organisation where the shareholders would be mad enough to bring in a managing director who had never worked in the field before.

Also, Kristy Debono, Jean Pierre Debono, Clyde Puli, Hermann Schiavone and David Agius are now going to think of themselves as the chosen and special ones and begin throwing their weight around. This is going to create a lot of tension.

It was just 400 party members out of 22,000 standing in between Delia and Said. Those 400 people decided the outcome which will help further ruin Malta and drive it into a sink-pit of sleaze. No, we don’t all like sleaze or consider it a minor inconvenience on the road to “victory for our glorious party”. No party can be considered glorious with a sleaze for a leader. But you actually have to be intelligent to work that out – not particularly intelligent, but you would be surprised how people who manage to make their coffee and get dressed in the morning find this too difficult to understand.

Glory and sleaze are mutually exclusive. Labour is victorious, but it is not glorious.

“Our glorious leader”